


Beautiful Fear

by ExhaustedRuins



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Blood, Death, Disturbed Sleep, Family deaths, Gore, Horror, Lots of Crying, Love, Mentions of Suicide, Other, Romance, Scary, Some fight scenes, Some funny scenes, Swearing, Thrilling, but it's cool, children die, i swear to god no one gets any sleep, i'm also terrible at tagging, i'm doing my best ok, maturin, mentions of the maturin, more about Derry, murder scenes, one (almost) rape scene, pennywise - Freeform, people die basically, suspenseful, the romance takes forever before it happens, tragic scenes, weaves into original story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-05-07 15:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 52,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExhaustedRuins/pseuds/ExhaustedRuins
Summary: Ronnie came down to the sewers to find her missing non-biological sister, but she instead finds something that was not at all what she was expecting. Her only fear exists in a rich family's spoiled son who usually spends his afternoons taunting her, obviously thinking terrible thoughts. She's trapped in the sewers. She can't float, she can't run away, and suicidal thoughts are not far behind. What happens when she goes hungry? Who knows, but Pennywise, the odd clown that's causing the children in Derry to disappear, doesn't seem to want to let her go free.





	1. HB

**Author's Note:**

> I've never made a fanfiction about IT before and I know that it's a little strange to think of Pennywise as anything even remotely close to the romantic type, so I tried to stick to the character as closely as possible but still weave in some character progression. Note that this is a story in the making and has not been completed, so I have no idea where this will go. Your suggestions would be very helpful and I would love to hear them!
> 
> -ExhaustedRuins

  
  
Ronnie didn't hear the scream until it had finished startling her and echoed through the barrens. Somewhere from a little ways behind her, the shriek seemed to break the quiet as though it had erupted from directly behind her head. She clutched her flashlight tightly and kept it pressed against the ball of her hand as she twisted to find the source of the sound. Her heart was pounding through her ears and her hands felt uncontrollably shaky, like something was crawling beneath her skin. Her neck nearly snapped at the sudden motion and her ankle was positioned at a very uncomfortable angle that made the muscle along her side of her leg stretched painfully. She was relieved to find that there was nothing there, but the circle of light shook as it passed from wall to wall. The barrens was large on the inside, much like when you walk into a closet to find that you can fit all kinds of things in it, but it wasn't a comforting place that you could sit in and fall asleep. It was a living nightmare. She felt as though her knees could give out at any moment, but her hopes weren't lost. Her breaths were short and came in gasps as though the air was choking her, but it was just the thick concentration and the horrible stench of sewer water.

 

She clasped her hand over her nose when the smell of rot wafted in, however. It was strong and merciless and it dominated the stench of waste. She dreaded the barrens, but only now that it had become her cage. She was alone and though it would have been better if she had brought friends, she had none to tag along. She had Barbara, but she wasn’t sure whether to drag her into it considering she was an only child. She didn’t want to imagine what it would’ve been like if she brought her here with her only to watch Barbara die and then have to explain everything to her mother while she wept. She didn’t want anything to happen to Barbara, so she lied to her and told her that nothing was happening even though they both knew that something was amiss.

 

She had someone else but they were definitely out of the question. There are just some people that you feel as though it would be simply right to lie to because you would rather keep them out of the dark than drag them into it with you. Even if she did have anyone else, she doubted they would ever want to come with her to a place like this. Who would want to walk all the way down to these grungy sewers filled with odor, rot, and waste?

 

Or even face the monster she was about to face?

 

She clawed through the murky water to look for her glasses. They had fallen from the arc of her nose as she was letting down her hair and disappeared into the mist of the water just before the scream broke out. Her ponytail was messy and drooped down which made it impossible to properly focus, so she pulled the elastic out of her hair relentlessly only to look down and watch as her specs soared down like a bird falling from a tree. She carelessly searched with her only free hand and desperately grasped at everything she could find. Something was pinched between her forefinger and her thumb. Though it obviously wasn't a pair of glasses, she pulled it from the water and examined what it was she had found. It was a friendship bracelet with two initials dangling from between a set of beads.

 

_HB_

 

Haley Boslan. She was Ronnie’s little sister. Jane Ramingway wore a friendship bracelet with Haley's initials on it. This had to belong to Jane, but she had been missing for almost a month. She was last seen picking flowers near the turn on Kansas street. Her mother panicked the whole while she was missing and would stand in front of Derry Elementary to see if she would miraculously appear from behind the main entrance doors. Many think she’s going mad, but no one would blame her. Anyone would go a little crazy too if their child went missing without explanation. Haley still cried when people talk about Jane. She never took off their bracelet even when it dangled around over her food at the dinner table and got stuck in her hair as she brushed it. Ronnie stuck the bracelet in her dress pocket and turned the flashlight towards the tunnel that was just behind her. The scream couldn't have been real. Ronnie knew about It. She knew that It liked to play pranks like this, but she could just imagine Jane crying out.

 

She could imagine her screaming yet being drowned out by the running water and the thick walls with the addition of the surrounding trees and bushes that stretched on for half a mile. The ghost of her shriek haunted her ears. The barrens wasn’t far from the Derry Town Dump; the heaps of trash tall enough to hide anything, so she wouldn’t have doubted it if there was the possibility of a body hiding somewhere beneath all of that junk. If it didn’t eat its victims, then where would they go? There were so many reasons why the barrens was the perfect place for It to live and it was no wonder why no one liked going down there. The barrens may be a part of the many public works of Derry, but that didn’t mean it was a safe haven for anyone who found any comfort in sewage and drain pipes. Ronnie carefully pushed through the water in her rain boots, but the surface was inching higher. Water poured from a large pipe to her right, causing varying levels of greywater. Her boots filled with the water as it splashed above the rubber rims. She could remember wearing rain boots as a little girl, stomping in puddles and watching her feet sink in mud. She loved her little green boots even as they grew too small.

 

Now she wore her mother’s boots that were heavy and loose around the heels. They were an ugly mud brown and she could barely even walk in them, but they were better than treading around in sneakers. She wore the rain coat she picked out last March that clung around her thighs and reached halfway down to her knees. It wrinkled and squeaked every time she moved around and she pulled the hood over her head to protect herself from dripping water. She had probably been in the sewers for a good half hour or so, just searching for any clues of Jane Ramingway or any of the other kids that went missing over the last three months.

 

The first was Jason Mandel. He was only four years old and his parents were devastated when Ruggie Jones found his little body nearly buried in snow just a foot away from the waterbank that dipped into the Kenduskeag. He had been frozen there since he went missing a week earlier. They found him on Valentine’s Day, the day when couples everywhere could be seen sharing laughter and riding in their cars while snogging in the backseat. Everyone was supposed to be having a good time and yet the moment that Jason Mandel was found and the whole town heard about it, there was a sudden cease in the happiness. Valentine’s Day became a day of death and mourning. Everyone says that his death was due to drowning, but how could a boy who died drowning live long enough to crawl about a foot and a half away from the water and still die from drowning even though there wasn’t enough water in his lungs for it to be considered fatal?

 

His parents say that he ran away the previous afternoon, but something’s not right. Even when he missed supper and didn’t arrive at school the next morning, they didn’t look for him and the police never asked why. No one did besides a few kids that ran about them at the drugstore on Center street. They really blew the top off Mr. Mandel and he stormed out of the drug store before his wife could finish paying like he found a nasty rotting rat beneath the table and knew who put it there, his face red and steam coming out of his ears and everything. Mrs. Mandel worked at the hospital as a nurse while Mr. Mandel was a carpenter. They were both relatively simple and quiet, but their older son, Matthew Mandel, liked to cause trouble even as he reached his last two years of high school. When Jason died, they practically shut themselves up in their home and Matthew was sent up north to Canada for reasons that no one in town knew. It was like the Mandels just disappeared off of the face of Derry.

 

It was hard to even believe that Jason was their son despite how they treated him before his death. It was almost as though now that he was dead, they had something to mourn about and they didn’t care about the fact that drowning couldn’t have been the cause. The autopsy was closed and no one knew whether it was a murder or an accident. Either way, the five kids that either went missing and turned up dead or just disappeared in just three months shouted “SERIAL KILLER!” The two bold words were even graffitied underneath the kissing bridge in red spray paint that faded after it rained. The bridge was popular amongst couples, but Ronnie never actually saw anyone on it besides a few passers-by who would simply stop, have a cigarette while leaning against the wooden railing, and then throw their buds into the water and walk away. She remembered playing beneath the bridge sometimes too, but only with one of her old friends from back when she was attending Derry Elementary, and even she moved away after the flood.

 

There was a flood in 1957 and one before that, but then there was the flood of 1980 which pretty wiped out most of the northeastern side of town. Some houses were flooded and while some recovered, others had to be demolished. The Center street drugstore somehow survived, though they did have to close it off for a few days since there was still too much flooding in the area for some poor Derry high school bastards to drive through with their Ford RS200s without getting stuck in the mud. Penobscot River took its wrath on the town along with Kenduskeag, but otherwise the town was just a little washed down. The canal did some damage too, but Penobscot River was definitely the worst of them all. Even Kenduskeag spilled a little, but the worst was the river. The first two floods were enough to leave a tremble in the hearts of the townsfolk, but the third really shook them. It was 1985 and it was almost as if the flood never happened, though the naked plots of land where the old houses once stood on northern Main street still left the impression of a loss.

 

No one dared to build on those empty plots of dirt, so they turned it into a park. The park was beautiful actually despite the trees still growing and budding and the flower patches still adapting to the freshly dug dirt. Sometimes, Ronnie would walk through the park with her dog, Molly, and picture the monument they were planning on building on a small dirt patch near the center of the site. She thought about that park and that beautiful stone monument as she desperately scrambled to find her glasses with her boots still filling with dirty water. The monument would consist of three stone statues, all representing the families that died in the flood near that part of town. She imagined their stone faces chiseled with happy expressions as though they were still alive, but everyone who spared a glance at their grey smiles and cold hands waving a final goodbye would have to remind themselves that their bodies floated in river water just where the statues stood, or so people say.

 

Ronnie would be haunted by the thought of their limbs sprouting out as they sank deeper into their own homes, possibly even basements, and watched as the bubbles of air ascended through the water from their mouths as they screamed for God. Their lungs filling with water; their spasms from within their chests painful. One of them was a mother of two, her long hair reaching down to nearly her buttocks, a dimple on either cheek, eyes that wrinkled with kindness, her arms wrapped loosely around her two little boys that leaned into her. Though Ronnie had forgotten their names, she knew that they must have been good folks --too good to live so close to a river that tends to overflow. Their smiles would chip and fade throughout the years and small markings of bird waste, dirt, graffitti, and etched initials would pull their faces out of Derry. It was sad the more she thought about it.

 

In reality, the dead just don’t know what it means to be dead. They still linger in the human consciousness even as they disintegrate and crumble through the fading edges of time. When you walk around a place where people died, you imagine their deaths and how it must have felt and though they’re dead and you’re not, they somehow climb into your head and nest in your mind. Ronnie saw it in Haley when she cried. She knew that Jane lived somewhere in her heart, but whether or not she was truly alive was a question she couldn’t answer. She saw it in Jane’s parents when they were walking out of the Derry Police Department, her mother clutching a white handkerchief, her father wearing a hint of frustration on his face. She saw it in herself when she looked in the mirror and saw a pale-faced phantom staring back with dark rings around its pale grey eyes; pale enough to be mistaken for the eyes of a corpse decayed by river water.

 

She found her glasses amongst the murk, but not in a way that made her any more relieved. As she stomped in her giant rain boots that her mother lended her, she heard a piercing crack that vibrated from beneath the soles of her right boot. She knew what it could have been, only she wasn’t sure until she released the item from the crushing weight and picked it up before it could float away in the water. As she watched the item reveal itself to her, the lenses shining in the light as it floated lazily, she couldn’t help but to imagine her body floating in that water too.

 

_You’ll float too, Ronnie. We all float._

 

She nearly dropped her glasses as she tried to examine the damage. She scowled at her own thoughts and cursed at herself beneath her breath. “Shut up!” She whispered angrily at her mind as though it would respond, but it only came with the same voice swimming through her ears.

 

_What are you looking for? Is it sweet little Jane? If Haley found out, she would hate you, Ronnie. She’ll come down here too and I’ll make her float._

 

She could remember the clown saying that to her once when she dropped one of her contact lenses down the drain and peered through the black tunnel to see if they had truly disappeared down the pipe. Though it’s voice was gurgled and unclear, she knew that it was the clown. She stopped using that bathroom and began using the upstairs bathroom after that, even though Haley would sometimes yell at her for taking too long in the shower. Even though she never had anything against clowns, something felt extremely unbalanced about the one she kept seeing. She first saw it when she was on her way to the Derry Public Library. She loved to read and wanted to see if she could check out a few books before winter break.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Though the cold was numbing the joints in her fingers and burning her cheeks, she simply wrapped her scarf around her neck and tucked in her nose and mouth so that she wouldn’t catch a cold. She hated her specs because she always thought that they made her eyes look bigger than what was natural, but she couldn’t see people’s faces and she couldn’t read the road signs. She was practically blind without them and she didn’t want to pop in contact lenses for a mere trip to the library, so she stuck them on sheepishly and headed out. She trotted down the icy sidewalks, making sure to avoid the cracks separating the cement tiles as the familiar voice of her old friend, Miriam (though everyone called her May), yelled, “Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back!” She and May used to play that game before the flood, but now she just played it quietly every time she walked down the sidewalk by herself. The streets were pretty much empty except for a few parked cars on the side of the road. The clouds parted and revealed the impending dusk as the wind grasped at the branches of the trees.

 

The weather man had threatened another winter storm, but it wasn’t until the next afternoon that it was supposed to hit Derry. The snow carved around the sidewalk as the scars of shovels scraping against the cement remained in gaps between what was once grass and the now iced walkway. Ronnie carefully stepped around, careful not to slip, but she was mostly just trying to avoid the cracks. As she was looking down, she glimpsed at the few storm drains that still poked through the piles of snow despite their enormity. They were all dark and looming, like something could come crawling out at any moment and grab her ankle in an effort to drag her down with it. The thought remained and she eyed the drains as she walked along.

 

She decided to have a little fun and took a penny out from her back pocket. The copper was rusted and cold from the December air, but not nearly cold enough to slip from her fingers so easily. She approached one of the drains cautiously, avoiding any shiny layer of ice she could find, but they weren’t ice at all. As she squatted down to take a look at the drain, she realized that the shining layer of crystal she was just trying to avoid was none other than water. She didn’t dare to touch it since it probably just came from the sewer, but what was strange was the fact that the water hadn’t frozen in the freezing weather. Perhaps someone dropped their bottle of water and it just hadn’t frozen over yet, or perhaps some of the ice somehow melted and left a small puddle that was bound to harden again. Whatever it was, Ronnie turned away and peered into the storm drain.

 

It was wet and cold and smelled like sewage, but something felt ominous about the darkness that lingered beyond. Like a child, she imagined all of the things that could have been lurking behind that mask of blackness. She thought of the werewolf from Michael Jackson’s _Thriller_ , Johnny and the twins from _The Shining_ , Freddy Krueger from _A Nightmare On Elm Street_ , the witch from _Tales From The Dark Side_ , and pretty much every other horror villain she could possibly think of, but none of them made her back away. She was trembling in the biting wind, but she managed to hold the penny in her hand and close her eyes. She felt the darkness beyond her trembling hands, urging her to throw the penny into the water that couldn’t manage to escape the drain. She felt it smiling a crooked-toothed smile as she hunched over her slowly freezing penny.

 

She mouthed a few words under her breath that only the deaf could read.

 

_I wish May would come back to Derry._

And she meant it more than anything. She would have travelled all the way to Oregon to see her long missed friend, but she used her quarters on saving up for a sheepskin jacket instead. She wanted to buy a matching jacket for her little sister, but feared that it would be too big on her and instead decided to buy one and wait until it was too small to hand it down to her. She wanted that sheepskin jacket badly and it was what she thought about as she flipped the penny into the drain. Though it felt stupid to make a wish, she did it anyway. It just felt nice to let it out; to become a child who believed that miracles could happen. The penny plopped and clinked into the water below, making a promise that only a ghost could keep, but Ronnie still listened.

 

For just a moment, she listened to the sound of the water rippling, the wind rustling, the once bustling neighborhood devastated by a flood and the threat of a merciless winter. She could feel the tension in the silence that followed and nearly shivered at the thought of someone watching her, only it didn’t feel as though it was just her imagination. She glanced behind her to see if maybe someone was simply watching her from their living room window, trying to figure out what she was doing, but as she glanced through the windows of the quiet houses, she saw no faces. She turned her head back to the storm drain as she was about to stand up and continue on with her walk. The cold was scavenging beneath her thin jacket and she wasn’t willing to sniffle and cough on Christmas, so she made amends to leave, but something moved.

 

She wasn’t sure whether or not her eyes were playing tricks on her, but she could’ve sworn that she saw something cough up from the drain like a grasshopper springing out from a bush. She was startled and fell back on her behind, sitting right in the puddle of gathering water. The cold seat soaked through her jeans and made her arse nearly freeze. She shrieked and stumbled out of the puddle, trying desperately to stand up, but nearly tripping on her own foot and falling into a snowbank. She caught her balance and looked back at the puddle before groaning and wiping her jeans. Despite her efforts to dry herself off, her jeans were soaked and it looked like she had peed herself.

 

Realizing how embarrassing the whole situation was, she stooped back down to see what had startled her in the first place. Just outside of the dark drain, sitting near the edge of the blackness, was a rusty penny, the picture of Abraham Lincoln almost mocking her. She sat amazed for a moment, unsure as to whether or not it was the same penny she had flicked it just a moment ago or not, but as she examined it, she saw the rust marks were just the same. It couldn’t have been. It was too impossible, but the thought crossed her mind over and over again. There was no reason for that penny to be there. The only way things went when they entered that drain was down and never up. She saw it when she witnessed a few kids playing tennis in their front yard just last summer and one of them made a bad serve and watched as the flying ball bounced into the road.

 

Though they ran after it, the ball disappeared into the drain and was never retrieved. Unlike the tennis ball however, the penny rested on the cement. The parts of it that weren’t rusted gleamed in the small given light of just a moment before the sky had gone almost completely dark. The stars began to twinkle from their hiding places and if it hadn’t been for the mystery unfolding in front of her, Ronnie would’ve probably already reached the library by now. She gawked at the penny for a short moment, amazed at how it could have possibly ended up back out of the drain. She decided to test what she thought she had seen and pushed the penny back into the drain with her fingertips. She listened as it plopped and clanked once again into the water.

 

This time, she stared at the gaping hole. She listened with close ears and averted all of her attention to the penny in the drain, but it didn’t pop back up. Instead, something startled her more than the penny had just moments before. Something, or someone, began to cackle from within the storm drain. Beyond the darkness, the sound was cheery yet grim. The laughter was almost childish and devilish, like the devil was laughing at her, but even as she peered closer into the drain, she couldn’t see a thing; couldn’t find what the source of the cackling was. She thought of turning around and bolting home. She thought of abandoning the trip to the library, the wish she so longingly wanted to come true, the sky filled with the colors and voices of dusk, but her body remained paralyzed.

 

She wasn’t afraid of a lot of things. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she was truly afraid. She was however, terrified of being close to people. It was the only fear she was truly aware of and it was the one phobia that she couldn’t seem to get rid of. She was terrible at parties, crowds, concerts, family dinners, and pretty much any other social event that you could think of which involved large bodies of people. The thought of someone being down there wasn’t terrifying to her. It sparked the curious child inside of her, the one that believed in miracles and flipped her wishes into storm drains instead of wishing wells. She wanted to know who the eerie laughter came from and why they were in the sewers.

 

It’s not like someone’s voice can just echo from within a storm drain and still be coming from outside of it unless it’s someone who is close to one of its openings, but the laughter sounded like it was coming from somewhere very close. Ronnie peered so close that if someone pushed her from behind, she probably would’ve fallen in. Just a moment later, a pair of yellow eyes suddenly unveiled themselves from the shadows and caused Ronnie to nearly fall back on her arse. The eyes were sharp, glowing, haunting, and everything that you would see in a horror movie. She blinked and stumbled back just enough to have her head away from the inside of the drain.

 

“What did Little Ronnie wish for?” A cheerful yet disturbing voice spoke from within the darkness. She rubbed her eyes once just to be sure that she wasn’t imagining the whole scenario, the classic _there’s-a-man-in-the-dark_ scene from every horror flick. Upon opening her eyes, she realized that it was far from something her mind could trick her into believing to be real. Whoever the man was stepped forward to reveal his sharp features. His white makeup was cracked in almost every part of his face, his yellow irises now oceans swimming within the whites of his smiling eyes, his red makeup which lined his lips and reached up his face and above his eyebrows in sharp spears that reminded her of the two outer teeth of a pitchfork, and his eyebrows reduced to nothing but faint lines which creased above where they should have been. His teeth were crooked as he smiled, his eyes never leaving Ronnie, or blinking for that matter, and his chin was pointed enough to create the illusion that his head was shaped like a teardrop, but it could have just been the lighting.

 

The fire that erupted from his scalp in short strands of red hair reminded Ronnie of the campfires they would have every summer. All of their relatives would pitch in and roast their marshmallows above the fire, creating little gaps where the flames would lick at their sticks and cave in as though they were splitting butter. His forehead was high, but it was his eyes and that smile that made everything seem so awfully wrong about him. He wore a silver clown suit with ruffles of what was once a whitish fabric around the neckline and orange pom poms that lined down his chest. The sleeves could barely be seen from Ronnie’s angle, but she could see that they varied in size as her eyes descended.

 

“Come join the circus, Ronnie. If you come down here with me, I’ll make all of your wishes come true!” The clown chuckled wildly as though thrilled by his own words, but Ronnie simply remained in a state of shock. She croaked out a few words, uncertain as to what would be the right ones to say in this given situation. It was a strange one really.

 

“What are you doing down there?” She squinted her eyes to see if she could make out anything else about the conspicuous clown, but only saw the smile plastered across his cracked face. His cheeks were plump and high, leaving the impression of an almost childish nature behind that awful grin.

 

“A storm blew me away. Blew the whole circus away.” Drool began to stream from his lower lip, making Ronnie nearly want to back away. It wasn’t that she thought it was really all that disgusting, but it just meant that something was definitely wrong with this clown. “Can you smell the circus, Ronnie? There’s all kinds of treats down here. You like treats, don’tcha?” The smells began to waft from the drain as though the clown was generating them, but how they smelled amazing! She could smell buttered popcorn, boiling hot dogs, caramel apples, chocolate, bubblegum, and steaming corn dogs. The scents were enough to make her mouth water, the tastes sinking from her mind to her tongue, but she couldn’t imagine chewing on chocolate in a sewer...

 

“W-Where’s my p-penny?” Ronnie stuttered. She stuttered a lot when she was unsure about something. Even in school, her teachers tried to ignore her occasional stuttering as she racked her brain to determine geometric shapes, but she knew deep down that they hated it too. The clown’s grin suddenly dropped. The thin streams of saliva continued to stretch like spider web and his gaze glared into her soul as though she had just asked the rudest question in all of history. His eyes were still locked on her, but they felt as though they were getting closer. He then revealed a gloved hand which held the rusty penny between two fingers, almost mocking Ronnie with how that awful grin returned to his face as though he was reminding her that it existed and wanted to taunt her with it. She nearly reached for it then. She nearly stretched her arm far out and snatched it like it was some sort of precious ornament, but she kept her hands to her body to protect them from the grasp of the clown’s gloved claws --or whatever the hell was hiding beneath the white kneaded cotton.

 

She didn’t know what he would do if she tried to reach for it, so she glared at him suspiciously.

 

“Wouldn’t want to get bad luck, wouldja Ronnie?” His voice was chilling, but she listened. “Here, come join the circus.” The clown extended a gloved hand towards Ronnie, the grin still stretched across that damned face, his blue eyes never losing sight of her, and his hand barely even twitching. It was as though he was something from a dream, but whether or not it was a nightmare was still unclear to Ronnie. She considered taking his hand, just to see what would happen, but she wasn’t that gullible. It was just a penny after all and even though she still wished that she could be that kid who believed in miracles, she wasn’t.

 

“No thanks. I’ve gotta go. It’s getting pretty dark. I hope you find your way back home!” She nearly shouted as she dashed away. She wasn’t sure whether or not the clown really heard her, in fact, she didn’t want to know, but she still believed that he did and he had slipped away and found someone else to taunt. She thought that maybe it was just a terrible prank or that she had completely lost her mind, but one thing was absolute:

 

If she hadn’t run away, she would’ve been the first victim instead of Jason.  


   


	2. Chameleon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Innocent Jane just wanted to be out in the sun and now she's helplessly in the dark."  
> (A bit shorter than the first chapter.)

It was getting darker the more that she trotted in those heavy boots that she hated so much. She wiped the muck off of her broken glasses and groaned as she tried to piece them back together, but the hinges around the top corners of the frames had snapped. The small rod that held them together had fallen somewhere in the water and was unretrievable. She thought for a moment, mourning the loss of her dear specs, then threw them back into the water to add to the countless items piled and buried in the water; forgotten. She struggled to turn around, thinking about It lurking somewhere in the pipes, but they were empty besides dripping water and wet gunk. She could hear the faint taps of the water jumping from the top of the pipes to the puddles below.

 

There wasn’t a sound. Even as she stood still and listened, the shriek crying from within her ears was the only noise she could hear. She pushed through the water, disobeying the weight of gravity, and made her way to one of the pipes. Her blurry vision mixed with the darkness, making it difficult to tell what layed beyond the mouth of the pipe. With caution, she inched deeper into the tunnel, feeling the walls curving in, and held her flashlight sternly to see where she was going. Though she knew that it would be hell trying to find her way back out, she had to know what that thing was doing with all of the missing kids. She felt like she was playing hide-and-go-seek with Haley and Jane and she was the seeker. She would scour every inch of the house trying to find any sign of them, but they were a pair of chameleons.

 

Jane could blend into practically anything. It was no wonder why the police hadn’t found her. Maybe she was hiding and waiting for someone to find her so she could shout, “What took ya so long, Boo? Did Misses Boz cawl y’in for supper and ya went ‘n ate without me?” And if it was Ronnie who found her, she would say, “Sorry, Pup. You’re just so damn good at hiding that I had to look everywhere for you. Are you okay? Are you hurt?” But Jane never ran off on her own for long. Ronnie missed the way she called everyone “Boo.” She called Ronnie’s mom “Misses Boz” and Haley “Hales.” She liked making up little names like that. When she didn’t know someone’s name or when their name couldn’t be abbreviated, she just stuck with “Boo” and she liked it that way. Ronnie knew when she was calling for her, though. She could distinguish things like that with Jane.

 

Something happened to Jane, but the thought made Ronnie want to hate the whole world. It made her face turn red when she thought about something happening to the little girl who was wicked good at hide-and-go-seek. She wanted her to pop out of nowhere, her long braids trailing behind her dress as it swayed, her dress shoes skidding against the cement, and her eyes full of joy. If only she was still a little child who believed in miracles.

 

Just then, someone peeked out at her from the mouth of the pipe playfully. Ronnie nearly jumped at the sight of the small figure edging out from behind the pipe wall, but when she turned her flashlight on the figure, the child disappeared.

 

_Like a chameleon._

 

She blinked once. Hard. It didn’t make the image reappear and it didn’t shake the fact that she had seen it. It was like something from the dreams she had nearly every night. Though they felt like nightmares, she would wake up and forget them, but the laughter that erupted from the mouth of the pipe and echoed all around her made it feel like nostalgia. It was a creepy kind of nostalgia, the one that makes you smile, but stiffly. The memory was so faint, yet it filled her head like a drug, destabilizing her ability to tell the difference between an illusion and reality. Her heart slowed at the sound, throbbed, and then picked up again cautiously. It felt as though her entire chest would collapse from beneath her skin as it sank.

 

She heard Jane’s voice cackle and then call to her as though she were real.

 

“Hiya, Boo! Wan’ play hide ‘n seek? I’ll hide and you come ‘n fine me!”

 

“Jane?” Ronnie croaked. She heard and felt the uneasiness in her voice, not towards the fact that this couldn’t have been Jane, but more towards the fact that if It was playing Jane, then that meant…

 

_No. I’m gonna find her. I’m gonna find her and I’m gonna get her away. I’m gonna bring her home to see Haley and I’m gonna give her her bracelet and then I’m gonna tuck her into bed and play her little music box. I’m gonna find her. She can’t be..._

 

She followed the figure, waiting for it to lunge at her once she reached the end of the pipe, but it disappeared. She searched frantically with her flashlight, the whole world spinning around her like she was stuck on a rotary, but the figure reappeared in the corner of her eye. Though it was just for a moment, she sprinted in its direction knowing well that it was trying to lure her in, but she didn’t care.

 

_I have to find her even if it means searching for the rest of my life._

 

She raced against the wishes of her legs to find the imposter, breathing heavily after sprinting about the sewers for a good few minutes, playing a game of chase with It. It was exhausting and it sure as hell annoyed her, but she was getting closer. Every time she took a turn, she could feel herself getting warmer and warmer. She finally reached a room, though it wasn’t a room at all. She could smell the familiar smell of rot, the one that wafted in just a little while ago when she was searching for her glasses, and she could feel the heat of the sun shining through an opening above her. She peered out from behind the wall, curious to see where the opening was and why it was there, but as she strained her neck to look, she saw the source of the light alright.

 

She also found the missing kids. All of them. Floating. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of tiny kids, some even as young as toddlers, paused in a moment of time, asleep forever and dreaming of who knows what or maybe not even dreaming at all, but _floating._

 

_We all float down here, Ronnie. Yes, and you will too!_

 

The voice came from not inside her head, but from behind her. She whirled around, ready to attack It with her own bare hands if she had to, but when she expected a tall clown like what she had seen in the storm drain last winter, she saw nothing. She lowered her gaze and saw that it wasn’t a clown at all.

 

“Jane?” she croaked again. Jane’s braids were hanging behind her, tied at the ends with white bows, but one was missing, her dress hanging by her knees, her shoes layered in mud and water. Her face was smeared with dirt, her neck was marked with red gashes and bruises, and her chin was scraped and swelling red.

 

_Is she...Is she really dead? Like Jason Mandel? Like Polly Raynott? Are the three other missing kids...floating?_

 

Her throat clenched at the thought, but the evidence was right before her eyes. Now that she was presented with it, the one thing that she had feared came true. Jane wasn’t just missing, but she had been murdered in cold blood by whatever creature was lingering about these sewers.

 

_Who does this? Who would dare hurt a little girl like Jane? Or Haley? Or Jason? Or Polly? Who would dare take away Mitchel Hucker, Lucas Lesley,_

 

“Come ‘n float wih me, Boo. I’m lonely.” Ronnie felt the tears well up in the corners of her eyes, knowing well that It was in front of her, not Jane, but wishing so badly that it could be Jane.

 

“I know you are. It must be really dark down here, isn’t it?” She began to hear the sadness in her own voice. The pain was breaking through her barriers like a crying army and it all washed in at once. The look in little Jane’s eyes, the one she wore so well, made Ronnie want to believe everything that was coming from her mouth, but she could see the thing behind those eyes. She saw the hunger and crooked smile. The same gaze she saw in that damn storm drain was staring at her and she didn’t know how to make it disappear. She wanted to believe that it wasn’t there more than anything.

 

“I’m scared, Boo. I’m really scared. I wanna git outa here. I wanna go see Hales and Misses Boz. I wanna be wih you. I miss you, Boo.” Ronnie’s chest heaved in desperate sobs. Tears were rolling down her face and warming the underside of her jaw as her breaths hitched in the depths of her chest. Her brows creased, desperate not to cry anymore, and she couldn’t help but to let the blots of her lips curl down in a tragic and painful frown. Her entire body cried and it felt like she was just going to break down and wail, but she stared at the false reincarnation of her lost friend.

 

“I miss you too, Pup. I know you’re scared, but remember what I said?” Her voice began to break down as she continued, “If you’re ever afraid, you come right to me, right?” Jane began to sob as well, her little face scrunching up and her big blue eyes glossing over. The light shined through the opening in rays, casting on her face warmly, but the scent of rot still came off of her --IT-- like perfume. Jane hated perfume. She would scrunch her nose in disgust every time Ronnie’s mother would pass by the table after spraying herself up. She thought it smelled like her aunt Janet and everyone and their mother knew that aunts that wear perfume, stiletto shoes, red lipstick, and carried around a Bourke handbag were not to be adored by their little niece’s and nephews. Jane described her Aunt Janet as a hag with a big brown mole perched on her upper lip like a nighthawk. That made Ronnie crack up when she first heard her say it. Jane always had funny things to say like that.

 

Then again, Jane was a funny kid even when she didn’t mean to be. She rarely ever wore a frown, so stiffly standing in front of a sniffling Jane Ramingway with her hands by her side and clutching her flashlight was bizarre in itself. Seeing Jane but knowing that it wasn’t Jane was a whole new world that she wasn’t sure how to go by enduring.

 

“Git me outa here, Boo. I wanna git out!” Her voice repeated again like a coach calling for the passengers to climb aboard for the second time, “Git me out! Pliz, Boo! I wan’ be wih you!”

 

“I wish I could take you with me, Pup,” Ronnie backed away from Jane’s ghost, feeling the tears getting stuck in her throat, but she continued in the coldest voice she could manage to force, “but you killed Jane.” Ronnie began to erase the image of Jane and cover it with the image of what she had seen just before the last winter storm on Jackson Street, the same place where George Denbrough was found with a stub for an arm. That bloody street where the cats would pick at bird remains throughout the months of summer and scurry into their homes for the wake of winter. That awful place she walked through every day. Jane’s figure suddenly morphed like a pleasant dream shifting into a nightmare. At first, her eyes simply cried, but then they fell. The light and gloss left them and within just the faint _tap!_ of a water drop, they were a vibrant yellow. Her thin lips cracked into a maniacal smile and her cheeks plumped and lifted.

 

_Show me what you really are._

 

It cackled and howled a laugh sinister enough to chill anyone to the core, but Ronnie remained unphased. Its limbs began to twist and crack as the bones broke and fractured. Its hair sunk back into its head and then grew out in blazing red strands as they stuck out at awkward angles, its legs grew longer and longer and suddenly sprouted large clown shoes that squeaked and splashed in the water as they grew, its silver suit with pom poms seemed to conjure itself from beneath Jane’s button-down dress, its buttons popped at Ronnie and nearly hit her, and the familiar white foundation and red lines accompanied by a shiny red nose sketched onto its face. For a moment, Ronnie thought she saw sprawled tentacles just before its arms popped out, but it may have just been a trick of the light.

 

Jane screamed, but her voice contained a deep growling rumble which made her innocent shrieks turn into demonic cries.

 

 _I can’t get It out of her now. There isn’t even a_ her _anymore. Oh, Jane. What have you done to my Jane? Where has she gone? Why? Why not me? Why did it have to be Jane? Little Jane? She was going to pick flowers for my mother. She wanted to put them in the vase on the dining room table and water them, but she never got the chance. She just wanted to pick flowers. Innocent Jane just wanted to be out in the sun and now she’s helplessly in the dark._

 

The sound was terrorizing, like listening to an old VHS tape break and tear within the VCR, but Ronnie simply stood as she watched something wear Jane’s appearance like a second skin and then tear it off as though it were but a bandaid all along. The tears became a sense of anger in an instant. The blood which filled the veins around the sides of her neck became hot to the touch. Although she felt a faint fear of what it would do next, she didn’t care what it did to her. She knew that it would hurt Haley if she never emerged from the sewers and her mother as well, but as long as they were safe, it didn’t matter if It ate her or shredded her to pieces. It could’ve made her float too and it wouldn’t have mattered. If the kids that floated were dreaming, then she would dream about playing with May beneath the kissing bridge and going home to find a vase of freshly picked flowers and the sound of Haley practicing the piano in the living room.

 

The familiar plucks of the keys would warm her heart and send it fluttering. She would step off of the door mat and into the archway to see Haley’s tiny figure sitting upon the bench, adjusted to just the right height, and stroking the keys as though they were fragile feathers. Ronnie would watch from afar, her shoulder against the archway, her head leaning to the side, her arms folded beneath her breasts, and wearing a near smile, but it was a secret smile that she only ever wore whenever she thought no one else saw. She could hear the piano in her mind, dancing gleefully, greeting her with a warm melody, and it reverberated through her ears as Pennywise stood before her with a grin etched across his childlike face. Though he was smiling so unpleasantly, she didn’t feel the need to run away.

 

In fact, she felt even more compelled to stay. She wanted to know what this clown’s hunger looked like. The clown chuckled one final time, a wild flicker in his yellow eyes, and his figure hunched slightly to keep eye contact. He was tall enough to probably swallow Ronnie whole. Her head would’ve just barely grazed his neck if she stood close enough to determine the comparison, but she didn’t hesitate to crane her neck and look him in the eyes. If he was going to chuckle and sneer at the sight of her as though she were a baby trying to learn how to park vertically, then she might as well have given him the same attitude. For the first time since her arrival, Pennywise spoke in his sing-songy yet unnerving voice.

 

“A penny for the clown will flip that awful frown.” The phrase certainly sent shivers up the back of Ronnie’s neck. She had heard the rhyme before at a birthday party when she was very young. A cheesy clown was handing out balloons for a penny each and smiled as they cheered the phrase. Ronnie’s mother handed her a shiny copper penny and Ronnie bought herself a red balloon. She carried it wherever she went for the rest of the day and tied it to her bed frame that night to prevent their dog from biting it. Molly didn’t like balloons and she growled when Ronnie brought it home. Her mother just assumed that Molly thought it was a living animal or something of the sort since Molly didn’t like birds or cats either. She always kept a penny on her.

 

“I’ll give you a balloon, Ronnie. Here,” he proceeded to hand her a red balloon tied by a ribbon which seemed to rest between Pennywise’s fingers as though the balloon was an animal on a leash, the kind that Molly wouldn’t like, “nice and red and look, it floats!” He released the balloon and opened his mouth wide in an act of surprise. The balloon reminded Ronnie of a shiny red apple, the kind that feels smooth when you pick it and squirts juice all over your lips when you bite it. She thought about reaching for it, just to see if it was real and what the clown would do, but she knew just what would happen and perhaps, in an ill way, Jason Mandel was a set example of it. The disappearances and deaths of the previous children were warnings for her not to take the balloon no matter how delicious it looked. And so, she stood her ground and didn’t so much as shift her gaze away from the smug creature.

 

“Or maybe you would like some flowers instead?” His once empty gloved hand began to fill and form a bouquet of wildflowers. Their small white petals twisted until there was enough to fill the clown’s hand -and how beautiful they were at first bloom! The moment there were enough to fill the bouquet, their stems curled and darkened as though plagued and their small white petals crinkled and fell onto the clown’s fingers and into the water where they hit the surface like they had hit the ground. They looked like falling bodies. They floated silently along towards her; small white doves soaking the water and flowing along; remains of dead angels. That was Jane in the water. It was Jane.

 

“Jane picked them herself.” A grin began to spread across its face menacingly. “She told me that she wanted you to have ‘em before you join her down here. I can help ya find her if you follow me!” He let out a cheerful burst of laughter which erupted from his chest at first and then moved down to his stomach. Ronnie’s knees felt weak as she stared long and hard at the wilted bouquet. They looked so real as though they were truly the flowers that Ronnie picked just before she disappeared.

 

_No, they only look real because they are. They. Are._

 

A lump clogged the base of her throat. She choked on it for a moment, breathed, swallowed, but it wouldn’t dislodge. It stayed here, taunting her, yet she didn’t dare twitch a finger.

 

“I’m not afraid of you” she barked weakly, but with fierce sincerity. It was like a whimper of protest, but with harsh honesty. The backlash captured the smug clown and squeezed him until his confidence seemed to form a puddle beneath his feet. His chin quivered as though her words had lightly stung him, but it only took a fraction of a second for his eyes to shimmer brighter and his naked brows to arch into a furious glare. His lips formed a thin line over his pointed teeth and curled back into a sneer. He lurched forward with a sudden jolt, sending bolts of electricity through Ronnie as she flinched and stood as stiff as one of the mannequins in one of the window’s at Cornell-Hopley’s. That’s where Jane’s mother bought her dresses.

 

His clawing hands clasped around her neck and squeezed so tight that she was sure her neck would break. His thumbs dug into her esophagus, bruising the skin underneath, pushing harder and harder the more it went on. The fingers at the back of her neck held a firm grip and the fingertips were digging into her skin like dull forks; bruising and denting, but never piercing through. Suddenly, it seemed as though the air had been sucked out of the world. The blood in her body was circulating in opposite directions, trying desperately to reach her head in time. After what was a moment of choking, but felt like an entire passing of a train, It spoke in a low and raspy voice which was only accompanied by a hint of a playful child’s squeal, but his words couldn’t quite reach Ronnie’s senses. His forearms were pressed against her ribs and pushing down as he pushed her against the nearest wall, raising her so that her feet dangled and she had to strain her eyes to look down at him.

 

Their furious rays crossed each other in burning explosions and sparks that flew in the direction of their eyes, but neither of them blinked. Ronnie felt the desperation in her body, her neck unbearably tight and clenched, her breath hitched in her throat, her jaw pressed against the clown’s hands that were strong as iron, and her legs kicking and knees bending out of hope of possibly finding a foothold. His grip grew tighter and tighter the longer they battled, but Ronnie was more afraid of what the clown would do if he wasn’t stopped rather than dying or floating with the other kids. Finally, after not even so much as a moment’s notice, the red lines that rose towards the clown’s forehead appeared to be revealing a passage beneath the clown’s face. Faint lines formed, then thickened creating two separate openings, but those openings curved together at the chin and a faint cracking could be heard.

 

She could make out the breaking of skin and muscle, but blood didn’t spill from the growing cracks. The clown’s eyes circled to the back of its head and it seemed as though its mouth was opening wide enough to swallow Ronnie whole. There was a growl and trails of hot breath wafted into her face, creating the illusion of peering into the mouth of a hungry lion. How could she move when she was so distracted by this unusual sight? How could she speak or blink or even think at all? The creature preying on her as though it were a hawk gripping its talons around a field mouse revealed itself to her so curiously, only to break apart and disclose its true face. As its mouth opened, she watched its rows of teeth, hundreds at a time, all separating and then bobbing about with the muscles beneath them that tightened at the conclusion of every breath.

 

Glowing yellow lights preyed on her eyes from the confines of the endless rows of teeth, but the circling pair that breathed her name from the back of its throat were particularly beguiling. Though she knew that looking into them would cause harm, she couldn’t help herself from allowing them to capture her soul in their rotating whispers. The world about her pulled apart until the lights were all the mattered in the world. They grew brighter, seemingly engulfing her everything in their brilliance and she could barely hear the growling of the thing’s appetite as her mind spiraled out of lucidity.

 

_Roonnnniiieeee…..Roooonnniiieeeeee….Come with me Ronnieeee…._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will include scenes from both the book and the movie, but they will not be exactly the same. Also, the Losers Club will come up a lot, but they won't exactly be the major characters of the story, though they will be mentioned quite a bit (mostly Beverly and Bill though.)
> 
> I've had way too much fun writing these first few chapters (:


	3. Puppet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when you float?  
> Or shall I say,  
> What dreams may come?

She glimpsed at images of screaming children, their faces deteriorating, their limbs contorting, and their screams blending together like a roaring chorus.

 

She saw hands reaching out to her and clawing at her skin. She saw fathers killing their sons, mothers killing their daughters, sons killing their fathers, and so on. She saw a younger boy and an older girl sitting on the side of the street. The boy had a splash of freckles across his pale face, his dark hair was cut yet grown out and barely tended, and he wore a t-shirt and a pair of obviously old shorts. A pair of large glasses had sunk down to the curve of his nose and yet they were big enough to fit both of his eyes into frame. Though his eyes were enlarged by the lenses, they were brown and blinked at the girl as though they were batting at her flusteredly.

 

The older girl had bright ginger hair that seemed as though it would come to life in the sunlight. She too had freckles, only they were darker and spottier than the boy’s. Her eyes were a beautiful rusted green, giving her breathtaking appearance an even more captivating glimmer. Though she was pale, her lips were pink with life. She seemed more alive than all of the other children Ronnie was seeing. The older girl was teaching the younger boy how to play yoyo. Her fingers handled the string as though it were a puppet and she was the puppeteer and the boy was mesmerized by her astounding performance, yet there was something else on his mind. The batting of his eyes, though masculine and casual, were apparent. He felt a flutter and stirred when she dared a glance at his spectacled face.

 

Just the way he seemed so amazed in her presence was a signal for love, yet neither of them acknowledged it or even took it into account. It was as though the thought was a flower still tucked into its protective layer. When it would bloom was uncertain and its possibility was small. It seemed as though both wouldn’t survive the winter, but the sight was beautiful nonetheless. When one smirked, the other couldn’t help but to let the corners of their lips pull back.  The sun was bright on their clothes; lighting up the sidewalk and generating waves of heat in the summer air. There was no wind and the sky was clear. It was days like this that such a dream could occur -and such a dream it was.

 

Their voices were muffled as though there was water in Ronnie’s ears as she witnessed the scene. They walked down the road and passed shops. The girl peered through the shop windows at the dresses and mannequins and admired their beauty. The boy glanced at her from time to time, but never for too long. They barely spoke a word and the silence was impalpable. It seemed as though both were lost in their own tracks of thought. They were constantly pulling the clutch, trying to find a place to stop, but neither snapped into conversation. Neither of them seemed to want to. Sometimes, the girl’s pace would slow when she spotted something even the slightest bit intriguing, but she never dared to stop. She would catch up to the younger boy eventually and both would walk side by side silently.

 

They turned at the corner and walked into the Aladdin. Ronnie recognized the theater as the one that was right in Derry, where all of the kids in town would’ve mowed the lawn just to cash a ticket in (as she was sure the younger boy had done). Both stood by the entrance waiting. Both seemed patient, yet a conversation sparked and Ronnie couldn’t quite make out what was being said. Very few words were audible however, and she was able to identify a name.

 

_Ben. They’re waiting for a kid named Ben. What’s gonna happen to them? Out of everything that they’ve been saying, that’s all that I get? How is he important?_

 

Just as she thought this, a bigger boy with blonde hair walked into view and greeted both kids, seemingly exhausted from running away from something -or someone. Another name creeped into Ronnie’s mind from the mouth of the bigger boy.

 

“Bowers.” Yes, clear as day. There was no mistake that Ben had mentioned someone by the name of Bowers, but whether it was a first name or a last was beyond her knowledge and exactly who this Bowers kid was was even more beyond her. All three entered the theater to watch whatever flick was on. The setting in itself seemed old fashioned, but it couldn’t have been any later than the 50s, making Ronnie consider what year it was twenty seven years ago. The only obstacle in the way was the numbness plastered about her head as though she was constantly falling asleep. It felt as though her consciousness was disintegrating the longer she remained in her dream state.

 

_I have to wake up._

 

Startled, the scene changed. She blinked and then it was dark. There was a tinge of dampness in the air and the smell of filth arose. She was back in the sewers; the horrid place where she saw that grinning clown, but she didn’t feel like she was really there. It still felt unreal and hazy. Her head felt too light on her shoulders for this to be considered reality. She didn’t feel _herself._

 

“Step right up, Beverly! Step right up! Come change, come cold, You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cheer, you'll die.” The voice cracked through a speaker which resided somewhere nearby. One could only suspect that it had to come from the music box which cranked and cranked in small clacks and croaks. It turned eerily deep and powerful towards the last few words until it passed as demonic. It sounded as though the speakers were giving out due to a gradual power failure and soon, there was a terrible pause. She knew that there had to have been a moment for It to prepare what it had in mind and she knew she wouldn't like it. She had to escape and she had to escape now.

 

“Introducing Pennywise, the dancing clown!” The voice croaked once again, this time cheery once more. Fireworks cracked and sparkled instantly from ahead of Ronnie and due to the sudden noise, she jumped. Her heart raced against the confines of her chest as music blasted through loudspeakers. She could swear that every note was out of tune and the song was quickly descending into a bottomless pit of insanity and dreary screams from an organ that had forgotten how to play. The scene filled red as a stage revealed itself from beyond her blurring vision and snapped open. The backdrop could only be described as a vision of hell. It consisted of nothing but red clouds that looked like puffs of smoke taken from bleeding lungs. There, standing amongst the bleeding clouds, was a stone-faced Pennywise with his usual get-up and vibrant yellow eyes.

 

Visions of his mouth stretching and the hundreds of rows of teeth to chew on her flesh pushed through the walls of her mind like mice skittering for scraps of food. The clown broke into a dance as the music kicked, his legs sprawling left and right, left and right, and his hands jolting down and up, down and up as though he were pumping air into a flat tire. Throughout his comical dance, his face remained unphased and murderous. His eyes were tied to Ronnie without a single trace of friendliness or humanity. They were drained of any emotion besides hunger and anger. Before she could seek the end of this performance, she felt her body move unwillingly. She hadn’t asked her feet to shift and her legs to push away from the wall she had been hopelessly clinging to and yet that’s exactly what they did. It felt as though her body betrayed her by pulling her out into the open where she knew the clown would strike, but it was as though she had no control over her body whatsoever.

 

And so she leapt towards what could have been her freedom, but instead turned into her captivity. As she was tugged along like a puppet on a string, the clown called with a cackle.

 

“Hahahaha!” It laughed hysterically as it pounced on her like it was a cat and she was the helpless mouse. Its cold gloved hands grasped onto her tightly and she found herself caught in its clutch.

 

_This isn’t real. There’s no reason to be afraid. It isn’t real. It’s just a nightmare, a terrible nightmare, but you just have to wake up. Come on, Ronnie! You’ve gotta wake up! You can’t die yet, so move!_

 

Its fingers groped at her skin and its arms shook her as though she were a magic 8-ball. It’s hands immediately shot for her neck, curling around her flesh and tightening its grip to ensure that she choked. She could feel its thumbs crushing her windpipe; strong enough to cause her to pass out due to lack of oxygen and never wake up.

 

_To stay forever in this dream. Staying here, if it’s my only hell, wouldn’t be so bad if Jane’s here too. I can float. We can all float. They’re all floating, so why can’t I? Why can’t I?_

 

“I’m not afraid of you.” The words were spat out without warning. It was as though her mouth had a mind of its own and was talking to It like the battle was solely between them. For a moment, Ronnie felt as though she had said it herself despite knowing that she hadn’t, but then a light came on in her mind. It was a light that should’ve never been switched on in the first place and balanced her will with her regret.

 

_This isn’t really happening. It called me “Beverly.” Yes, that’s what it said. Who the hell is Beverly? Why is she in my dream? Is she dead like the rest of the kids? Was she not afraid? Is that why she was different? Does that mean that I’m different as well, or are we both victims of an entire species of simply dead people? Where do I fall?_

 

The clown pulled her closer, his eyes crossing to meet hers and his brows furrowing into a faint ‘V.’ His mouth curved into a frown. Clearly infuriated by these words, he gritted his teeth behind a smile.

 

“You will be.”

 

The scenery fell away and her body which seemed to be that of Beverly’s was gone.

  


May awoke with a startle. Her heart pounded in her ears and her lungs stung with exasperation. Her hair dropped to her shoulders, loose and tangled, as she shot up from her pillow and sat in the pitch darkness. Her eyes moved from wall to wall, searching for any sign of her nightmare, but what resided in her mind took the form of something that she knew could not have been possible. Sweat drenched her bangs and caused them to stick to her forehead like a wet towel. She tried to regain her breath, but her chest heaved painfully as though she had just ran around the world and then back. The once bright sunflower yellow nightgown that wrinkled and sagged around her body now clung to her proportions and grew hot. The things powering through her tiny skull; unable to die. All that rang through her ears was her steadying heartbeat which continued to pound against her ribs.

 

She wasn’t sure whether this was, in fact, dream or reality, but it was the darkness that surrounded her and ordered her to remain still that became fearful. Images of the nightmare screamed like a car blinker in the back of her eyes.

 

_Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding._

 

She saw it in the corner of her room; a tall and shrouded figure. It was hunched like a cat and as silent as a mouse. She could’ve sworn that it was there. Right there. Just behind the door where the darkest shadows lingered, but there was no telling whether it was really the door or not. She wasn’t sure and as soon as she could be certain of it, the figure would disappear from her mind. She glanced about desperately, trying to identify shapes and outlines, but it was too dark to know what she was facing. The night was quiet and desolate. The whispers of the trees were just barely audible over the course of silence. May’s parents slept soundly down the hallway and behind the last door. The house was large but it wasn’t luxurious; maybe two stories with two bathrooms, three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen alongside the dining room, a door which lead to the garage at the end of the hallway between the staircase and the living room, another door that lead to the basement just around the corner from the garage door, and a small garden in the back beside a bird feeder. Their small porch consisted of two white adirondack chairs and tulips which lined the railing and opened their orange mouths to stretch their pollinated tongues towards the sun.

 

There was no sun now, making the house feel cold and less lively than when you could walk by and see the tulips. Now even the garden was shrouded in darkness and growing cooler by the minute. It must have been just passed two in the morning and it felt as though May had gotten barely a wink of sleep. Even the window held no shred of light, making the room feel all the more unfamiliar. May knew that she had to be in her bedroom --any other place wouldn’t make sense, but there was a wash of something strange. The atmosphere was no longer peaceful like when she woke up sometimes to get a cup of water. It was deadly still and dark as though she had woken up in a cemetery, but blind. Unable to see a thing, she reached for the drawer beside her and felt for the handle.

 

She had done this numerous times to illuminate her room whenever she got up in the middle of the night to take care of something, but it was different this time. This time she was scrambling for her flashlight so she could extinguish her fear of something lurking beyond the edging darkness. She fumbled around the drawer through her journal, books from Nora Roberts, pages torn from homework assignments, an old quill that she kept tucked in a case, and bracelets she made out of wool from her mother’s sewing kit. She had made them for her two best friends, Bailey and Sarah, but never found the opportunity to give it to them. They sat there in her drawer, nearly forgotten but not entirely, and she pushed them aside as she grabbed the flashlight to be forgotten even more. She pushed the button to turn it on and watched her room come into view as the light flicked on and shined a faintly yellow circle onto her closet door.

 

There was no creature lurking in the darkness --that was certain, but a sound imminated from behind her closet door which had been shut purposefully to prevent her from experiencing her usual paranoia. It was a loud and clear growl as though she had startled a snarling dog. Her heart picked up again in hard and beating thumps.

 

_Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding._

 

Her light shook against the door as though she had discovered some kind of disturbing secret. She was shaking feebly and felt as though her heart would push through her chest and make a bloody mess on the floor as it escaped out the window. She couldn’t help but to imagine her nightmare, breathing at her heels, chasing her through a dark forest in a land that was all but unknown to her. Her breath hitched every few seconds and made it clear that she was afraid, deeply. She imagined the hound, biting away at the air to mock her, its teeth glimmering in the summer moonlight, its eyes yellow and glowing ferociously, its lips pulling back into a snear and dripping with drool. There was something behind her door and she could do nothing but hope that it wasn’t the demon hound she saw in her nightmare.

 

She dared to pull her legs out from beneath her sheets. She dared to press her feet against the wooden floor without feeling for her slippers. She dared to tiptoe ever so silently across the room towards the closet where she hesitated and swallowed hard before building enough courage to reach for the handle. As her fingers pressed against the cold metal, the door suddenly pounded and there was a loud shutter. She shrieked and pulled her hand towards her chest where it could feel the drumming of her heart and the heaving gasps of her lungs. She could feel the pulse in her ears and though she knew that whatever had hit her closet door could have just been something that had fallen from the top shelf or a raccoon or something as equally unremarkable, glimpses of the demon dog jumped about the curtains of her mind.

 

She shook as she took the handle again, eager to extinguish her fear before she was sure that she had lost her mind, and vigilantly pushed aside the sliding door. There was the familiar _click_ of one mechanism meeting another to stop the door from colliding with the wall and May looked into the closet wearily. For a moment, the closet was simply dark, but just as soon as she was sure that she simply wasn’t awake enough to realize that there was nothing to fear, two yellow eyes blinked at her from beneath the dresses. Startled, she pulled away and her bosom hit the floor before she could shriek a second time. Her flashlight slipped from her grip and plunged to the floor where the bulb broke and flickered before it went out. The world went dark and all that was visible were the two glowing eyes.

 

A low growl sounded from just near her toes and she was sure that she must have been dreaming.

 

_It can’t be in my closet! It can’t be real! This is just a nightmare. A horrible, terrible nightmare and I need to wake up! Wake up! Oh god! Oh- Oh Jesus!_

 

The grumble crept closer as she clammered towards her desk which sat a few inches away from her bed. She could hear the deep, hot breathing sighing from the creature as its paws hit the floor and its uncut nails clacked against the wood. She imagined that they were sharp enough to cut someone open without a single jerk and she couldn’t help but to imagine what would happen if it used its claws on her. She felt a trickle run down her spine at the thought. It shot down and then back up and suddenly, she had forgotten how to breathe.

 

_Oh, God! It’s gonna kill me! I’m gonna die! I’m gonna-_

 

A great force hit her and knocked the wind out of her lungs. The creature lunged towards her with a strength so powerful that her back hit the floor and she could swear that her head nearly cracked open against the hard plank. Her temples ached and the back of her skull pulsed painfully as she creature pinned her and sneered hungrily within just centimeters of her face. Its breath was hot against her cheeks and a wet stream of saliva hit her chin and drizzled down beneath her jaw. Her body quaked and her lungs gasped for air beneath the creature’s crushing weight. It felt as though her diaphragm had simply stopped supporting her lungs. Its glowing eyes glared at her ravenously.

 

It began its course with the left side of her jaw before ripping flesh from her neck and spewing her blood, choking her violently with the liquid which filled her lungs and burned. Her frightened eyes flickered, bulged, shimmered with tears of pain and fear, then sunk back and died. Her strength leaked from her body before it dropped like dead weight. The quiet night filled with the scratches of tearing tissue and the smacking of a lustful tongue taking and tasting the sauce of life.

 

And then quiet.


	4. Drowning Gloriosas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A switch to the perspective of Jane's mother, Maggie, who is still trying to continue her life without her daughter.

The morning tea was cold as it swam on her tongue. Maggie’s husband, William, had added lemon and honey to please her, but the taste wasn’t as sweet as she had remembered it to be. She poured a bit of milk and tried to place it near the hot stove. There was nothing else they could use to heat up their meals besides the furnace, but it was gathering with dust and growing more troublesome as the weeks passed by. William sat at the table to read the paper and hide his unattended sprouts of beard from Maggie’s prying eyes. He hadn’t shaved in weeks due to over stressing about his work which mostly consisted of sitting in an office for hours on end talking to editors on the phone. He was a journalist, though not a very successful one at best.

 

Maggie didn’t work other than tending to things at home, but she started working part-time at the strip mall which put a bit of cash in the bank. Whenever Matilda had to be looked after, she would call Barbara and have her come over and sit down with the baby and let her do her thing. Barbara had a gift for taking care of babies and there wasn’t a doubt in Maggie’s mind that she would become a wonderful mother one day --perhaps, and she thought this with a strong disgust, a better one than herself. And it was true that Maggie wasn’t the best mother. She worked herself to death scrubbing the kitchen counters, folding the laundry, working the register, washing the bed sheets, scrubbing the bathrooms, spraying the windows, and every other chore that you could possibly think of that she could rarely care enough for Matilda. 

 

_ Oh, it was so nice when Jane was here. Oh, my baby. Where could my baby be? I want my sweet little Jane … _ . Oh _ sweet Jane... _

 

Their dining room was bland and consisted of nothing but the table, a vase of dried flowers, an old and spider-infected chandelier that was passed down by her grandmother, and a wall phone with a curling chord that hung and had to be taped due to the baby using her newly grown teeth to chew down. Their baby, Matilda, was only a year old and had a beautiful set of stubby teeth that lined most of her top and bottom gums. Whenever she smiled, her goofy front teeth would strip themselves of her lips and gleam in the light. She had blue eyes like her mother, a patch of ginger hair like her father’s, and a button nose like her older sister. At this time in the morning, she was sitting in her plastic high chair at the end of the dining table with the same bib Jane had worn when she was her age, washed daily in hopes of perhaps having a third child once Matilda had grown out of her diapers, but now it had a long yellow streak from her baby formula which had been there since two weeks ago.

 

The baby sat quietly, her head twisted to watch her mother bustling about the kitchen, her big blue eyes so curious and full of wonder that one would never believe what was behind them. The light swam in their oceans which flowed and churned at every sound, yet shined and reflected the world around them. You could stare so deeply into them that you would become lost in their deep blue waters, yet she would pull you out with her unimpeachable smile. Maggie had wrapped her apron around her waist and taken a rag from the cupboard to wash the dishes that had been left in the sink since the night before. She counted them to be sure that none were missing.

 

_ Three plates, two knives, two forks, two spoons, two water glasses, two wine glasses… _

 

The number had stopped exceeding three. It felt wrong to be counting in this way. The numbers that bustled about her head felt like they were being said in a language that Maggie could never understand. She knew why and yet she didn’t want to think about it right now. She had to store the dishes away, pick up Matilda and watch over her as she washed the laundry using only soap and water (she forgot to pick up bleach on her way home from work the other day), put it in a basket, then fold it as she stored it away. Afterwards, she would set Matilda in her playpen and then sit down in her little floral armchair to watch  _ Family Feud  _ until an hour before lunch. Every morning, before she did any of the housework, she would make a ham sandwich for Jane with diced carrots, a breakfast pastry, and two apples.

 

Jane liked to give an apple to one of her friends whose mother was allergic. She was kind like that. She would give up her savings to a homeless runt if that explained enough of how kind she was. Her disappearance, at least to the Dwellek family, was a heavy boulder that couldn’t be lifted. It even sat on Matilda’s small shoulders, still round with baby fat, for she still cried at night when she didn’t hear her sister’s breathing. Jane usually slept close enough to the crib for her to hear Matilda breathing through her mouth at she slept. She never dared to close her eyes until Matilda was safe in the cradling arms of sleep. What Jane had never gotten the chance to realize however, was that the only way to get Matilda to stay asleep was for Jane to sleep close to her.

 

Over the last month or so that Jane was gone, Matilda cried relentlessly in the midst of the night. It drove William insane and he couldn’t help but become furious with himself for hating the baby. He knew that it wasn’t her fault; delicate she was, but all too rambunctious. Every cry she screamed awoke them and released a groan from William’s throat. And he would think,  _ By God, will this ever end? When will I sleep? I have exhausted myself over a little baby. It was so nice when Jane was here. Matilda was nice and quiet and the nights were peaceful and serene. Is this my punishment for not being a good father? Will she grow out of it, or will she cry forever? Will she remember Jane, or will her memory wear over time? I don’t want this.  _

 

_ I’ve exhausted myself. I can scream too, you know! I can cry and make a fuss, but that was --IS-- my daughter and I saw her in that same crib only she was the quiet one. She gripped those very bars curiously and I swam in those very blue eyes before. I thought you were like Jane, but Jane was --IS-- one of a kind and now she’s not here.  _

 

And then he would rub his dry eyes, still raw from sleep, push the bedsheets aside, pull himself up and off of the mattress, and stumble his way into Matilda’s room where he would lift her from her crib and rub her back as he shushed her consolingly. He would repeat this nearly every night since Jane’s disappearance. He had gotten used to the routine now, noting to grab a cup of coffee on his way to work every morning to fend off the sleepiness of yet another restless night, and yet it was difficult to get used to hearing Matilda cry. Every night was always a startling series of wailing and screaming. For a father, this was normal if you had a baby, but if you had a baby that was crying due to the absence of your missing daughter, this was something you could never get used to.

 

Maggie stored away the dishes and turned towards Matilda who had finished eating and began her usual habit of staring at her mommy until she noticed and walked over to let her out of her chair. She placed her hands beneath the baby’s arms and hoisted her up onto her hip with her hand on her back to keep her from falling. She kissed her head; not too hard, but a light peck with a motherly tenderness. William sat with his sleepless eyes set on the morning paper. The familiar chirps of the morning birds chipped the silence. 

 

_ The garden needs tending _ , she thought, only she didn’t really care too much for the snapdragons, only the tulips. Mrs. Mandel had beautiful gloriosas in her front garden which lined the side of her house and then spread about her porch. Her honeysuckle would graze against your feet as you walked up the steps and you could see her patches of daffodils, viburnums, Virginia roses, New Jersey Tea, dogwood, and even a few patches of elderberry. Her garden was her pride and every morning, Mrs. Mandel would step down from her porch with gloves, a garden trowel, and pruning shears and tend to her beloved garden as though it were a pet that needed feeding.

 

Maggie would watch from the living room window from time to time as this morning ritual was repeated and wonder if there was anything else that mattered to the woman. Her son had died and she could still water and lift her stupendously perfect gloriosas? If she could lift a flower and care for it so tenderly, then why not as a mother? Maggie couldn’t remember the last time she had seen the woman truly care for her son. Jane was nowhere to be seen and Maggie had forgotten how to care for the dear life of something so delicate, but seeing Matilda forced her to comprehend the difference between a plant and a child.

 

While one will die and remain pure, the other will grow and become guilty of their mistakes. Mrs. Mandel wasn’t raising her child at all, but in her mind, she was raising a flower that had to be perfectly planted and if it wasn’t perfect when it bloomed, she wouldn’t care for it. The problem with her son was that he wasn’t pure enough. He was just a child. Maggie’s heart ached for the boy who had been dead since the bleakest winter in Derry as of yet and witnessing Mrs. Mandel’s morning duties became unbearable after the disappearance of her own child.

 

_ They’re all monsters _ , she thought as she placed Matilda in her playpen and settled down in her armchair.  _ That poor boy didn’t deserve a terrible mother and father. He was a sweet boy; the purest I’ve ever seen, but they destroyed him with their neglect. How spiteful. How awfully selfish. Her gloriosas will die if she drowns them in water as she does now that she doesn’t have a child to feed. Those damn flowers are all that matters to that wretched bitch. Why, if I had a child like Jason… _

 

She glanced at Matilda, who cooed adoringly from her little pen. She had her pacifier in her mouth, her big blue eyes swooping for something to play with, and Maggie truly saw her then. She loved Matilda so dearly that she was glad she hadn’t disappeared alongside Jane and cried at the thought of it, but she was a baby. She hadn’t grown up as much as Jane and hadn’t swatted a fly in her life. She was still pure, but she had become curious like every other child her age. She would grow to make those mistakes, to intend to do things she knew were wrong, to fall in love and then break, to use and abuse, to perhaps drown her gloriosas in her guilty neglect of the things that had once mattered, but she wasn’t Mrs. Mandel. She was Jason. She was Jane. She was Polly and Lucas and Mitchel. 

 

She was a child, not a flower.

 

_ Come home, Jane. My baby, come home. _

 

Matilda caught sight of her mother following her with her eyes and pulled back her plump cheeks into a gummy smile. Her front teeth looked like white tombstones which poked from pink flesh. She was the little girl that Jane left behind.

 

She swam in her blue eyes and broke into a series of long and breathless sobs as a mourning dove perched itself at the window and became the first Matilda ever saw. While she watched the dove through the glass, its eyes gleamed yellow in the morning light and paused to look at her with a faint and unexpressed smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gloriosas are a symbol of Pennywise's presence, in a way, so keep an eye out for them throughout the story (:


	5. Face The Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronnie begins to realize exactly what brought her down to the sewers and what she really is afraid of.

The air was tangy. Something lurked behind the masks of shadows, but Ronnie could barely distinguish the shapes of pipes and walls from the other figures. She saw a tricycle, just tall enough to reach her knees, leaned against the pipe wall. She didn’t want to think about the child that might’ve owned the rusty thing; the wheels too stiff to move without screaming through the tunnels for oil. She could only imagine a little boy with shorts and navy blue kickers pedalling down Jackson street with his little fingers gripping the handlebars and his legs moving up, forward, down, back, with the pedals pressed into the arcs of his feet. His kickers would take the impact though, their rubber soles being enough to sustain the uncomfortable squeeze of his plantar fascia molding into the metal piece, and his legs would never grow tired. 

 

They would just moving, forward, down, back, and up, forward, down, back, and up again. The wind would pick up beneath his older brother’s jacket which he had pulled over his shoulders before heading out and push it out so that it flapped behind him like a cape.

 

_ Lookah me, Boo! Imma supahuro! Like the wuns in the movies! Like supagurl! Imma fly away! Lookie heer! _

 

“I’m looking, Pup” She whispered aloud, though very hush. Her small voice was too quiet to reverberate through the tunnels, so it just lingered beyond her lips and died before she realized that it had escaped. Her face was wet with tears and endless crying and her eyes felt hot and puffy. It stung just to blink or breathe. She had been in the dark for what felt like hours alone, sobbing out of realization that she was utterly and completely hopeless. She couldn’t go home now that It had trapped her and she had no one but It in these tunnels with her. She had woken up a little while before, having been floating for perhaps a day or two. It was difficult to tell. The darkness screamed, “one night!” but her body clock screamed, “days!” She wasn’t afraid, but she was sad. So sad. Uncontrollably depressed actually. She considered just smashing her head against the wall to end the pain in her heart, but it wouldn’t subside.

 

_ It won’t go away. No matter what, it’ll never go away. Everyone else could float, so why can’t I? Why did I have to wake up? The dreams weren’t pleasant, but they were better than here. Here isn’t home. Here is a grave that I have willingly jumped into without knowing that it would become my own _ , she thought as she walked amongst the murky water. She felt her away around the cold walls, pressing her palms lightly into the hard concrete and smoothing her fingers along its rough outside texture that had been smoothed down into arcs that connected and then fell again around her, careful not to scrape herself. Her socks were wet inside her boots, but she had dumped them of water. She pushed around in the heavy greywater, feeling her way through the darkness. 

 

Every now and then, small drips would sound from the ends of the tunnels. Here and there, a drip would sound nearby to indicate condensation around the interior walls. It was, in fact, nearly summer, but it felt cooler down in the tunnels than she remembered the temperature feeling outside before she walked into her little mousetrap. She remembered the sun on her bare shoulders. It would glow against her cheeks and forehead and flow through the skin on her eyelids, lighting up her dark world throughout every blink with vibrant hues of red and orange.

 

_ January embers...My heart burns there too. _

 

A hand struck at her shoulder and she shrieked. Another caught her other shoulder and squeezed hard enough to bruise. She winced at the pressure, trying to distinguish the figure from the darkness, but it was too difficult to see until two bright yellow eyes blinked at her, biting through the pitch blackness. They antagonized her and stabbed into her like darts. She could hear its breathing, raspy and broken as though hungry but screaming mad, and it pinned her against the concrete wall. It smelled of rot and sewage and its breath cloaked her face like spreading wildfire. It was uncomfortably close to her, breathing on her and piercing her with its eyes that flared and bore like starving lions pulling apart the carcass of an antelope, but it just stood with its hands clasped around her shoulders.

 

Its body was pressed close to her and she tried to press herself closer to the wall to shy away from it, but she couldn’t move anymore. 

 

_ I’m trapped. This is it. It caught me. Now what am I supposed to do, Barbara? You always know what to do, but are you not here? Do I have to do this by myself? Please, Barbara. You have to tell me what to do! _

 

She felt its hands release her shoulders, but they began to grasp at her neck and face. One snaked its way around her neck while the other grabbed her jaw and pressed into her cheeks, pulling her face towards itself so that her cheeks puffed out. She wasn’t afraid, not of It, but she didn’t want to be trapped there. She wanted to break free, if only it didn’t squeeze her into the palm of its hand. It cackled and growled and drooled, but it didn’t seem cheerful. It was angry and it wanted blood. If blood were to spill from her rushing veins, then it would lose whatever head it had and tear her to pieces in the flash of a moment.

 

Though it wasn’t any more than a moment that the flash came and went. It was a light so bright that she thought she had gone blind and it hurt. The pain pulsed through her temples and it felt like her eyes were about to roll to the back of her head. It was just a moment, short and agile, but it ate her and then spat her out before the clown could pull away. 

 

_ “Hee, ho, _

_ Nobody home. _

_ Meat nor drink nor money, _

_ Have I none, _

_ Still I will be merry, _

_ Very merry. _

_ Hee, ho, hee, ho.” _

 

The voice of a child sang and filled her head until it felt like a buzzing beehive. She stood stiff for a second, her skull in the most unbearable pain she had ever felt in her life, but then her eyelids flickered, the light pulled itself out of the darkness, and the pain subsided. There was a loud ringing in her ears, but it only lasted a few seconds before it crawled away. The clown was against the opposite wall, the outlines of its arms and body pressed against it as though it were afraid, but it looked at her with a deep and menacing stare and its pupils flaring. It looked like it was waiting for her next move, but it was afraid. If it had a heart, which was of complete mystery to her, it was pumping a hundred times per minute.

 

She could hear it breathing, but it had engulfed itself in shadow, making it difficult for her to tell whether or not it was her own small breaths. The faint dripping stopped and the moaning hallow winds that passed through the tunnels were quiet. For a moment, Ronnie thought that time had stood still, but then there was a faint rustle and the pair of glowing yellow eyes approached her slyly. She felt herself subconsciously press back into the wall, ready to run if she had to, but where would she go? The tunnels were nearly pitch black and there was no telling where they led. If she was lucky, she might’ve hit a dead-end and It knew these tunnels better than she did. If she ran, no matter what direction, It would know exactly where she was going and it would find her and kill her.

 

She had to confront it; face the dragon before his flames burned her alive. She let It approach staggeringly, deciding between whether she should press further or turn the tables and attack first, but her legs wouldn’t comply. Her only fear was if It turned out to be a real person, a stranger to be specific, who was creeping towards her with the intent of taking advantage of her the way those boys did. She could still feel Dylan Purcell’s hands feel their way up her stomach and down her thigh, his sticky breath against her face, and his eyes full of lustful intentions and greedy desire yet it was hers that overflowed and spilled with tears. It was all she was ever afraid of in her life. Werewolves were a character of fiction, so were things in the dark. Heights were but another level of elevation and spiders were but innocent creatures spinning their webs to survive.

 

Though she wasn’t afraid of falling, heartbreak, injury, or even death, she knew fear all too well. She felt it, just slightly, as the thing approached, its hands pressing against her stomach. This time, however, it wasn’t Dylan Purcell. It was It and she saw through the facade. Even when Its hands cascaded down her thigh and Its breath wafted into her face, smelling of black licorice, she didn’t feel afraid. Its hands began to claw their way around desperately, though, and she began to feel a hitch of panic rise within her as it grabbed her sides and her leg. She tried to push away the hands that were hurting her, but they wouldn’t cease to bruise. All she could see were those glaring circles of fire that burned into her.

 

She had to face It before those eyes burned her alive. She forced herself to relax. After all, Haley’s life wasn’t going to be any better with her in it. If she somehow escaped to find her, It would get to her before she could and the first thing she might’ve walked into upon entrance of her house would’ve been her mother in the living room, her father’s picture still perched on one of the floor cabinets, a vase of wilting flowers on the dining room table, and Haley’s body mangled in the bathtub after her bubble bath. Her hair would be stuck in the drain with the rest of her still covered in bubbles, her head caught underneath the water and everything about her would have been still and cold. The water would be cold and dark and she would have died alone.

 

_ “Still, I will be merry, _

_ Very merry...” _

 

All that it took was a growl of strength and a push. A surging jolt of impulse crashed through her and suddenly her body reacted uncontrollably as though she were a puppet being pulled on a string, much like in the dream. Her hands pressed against its chest and sent it soaring as tough she had pushed a swing. The wall hit flat against its back and it let out a painful groan. It fell to the ground writhing, coughing and trying to regain itself, but despite this, she couldn’t trust that it was truly hurt and stepped forward. It winced and retreated towards the wall. Through the thick darkness, its outline was barely visible, but with the help of those eyes, she was able to see at least some of its face.

 

For a long moment, her thoughts hardened until they were concrete like the walls in the center of her mind. She stared at the broken creature, failing to pull on a brave mask, its smirk wiped from its face, its eyes now stung by the wasp of fear. She wanted to rip its heart out, if it had one, which was still a mystery, she was willing to unfold, and strangle it the way it did to Jane. She wanted to kill it and she nearly did just then. She nearly let herself tear it apart, but it looked at her.

 

Instead of the familiar sense of power that radiated from it, there was a sense of helpless desperation, like a child begging to live, though it was silent. A thin glint of light appeared in its eyes, too small to surpass much of its glowing yellow irises, but it was certainly there. It looked at her, distraught and confused, trying to calculate its next move, but it seemed almost stuck. Much like herself, it didn’t know what to do. It just squatted near the wall, keeping its head low but looking at her. 

 

Was it shaking? She couldn’t tell. Was it afraid or was it a facade? She didn’t know. All that she knew was that she pushed it and it worked. She got it off of her with one effortless push and now her fingers were tingling with all of the energy that just surged through them. She knew that it was strong enough to crush every bone in her body, yet there it was, cowering away, tucking itself behind its own shield to beleaguer her. Right then, she wanted to cry. She wasn’t sure as to what made her feel this way, but there was a lump at the back of her throat that stung and clung to the walls of her neck. She swallowed hard and tried to hold back the tears that were forming in her eyes, but it was as though her emotions were fortifying its shield.

 

She burst into tears, sobbing the longest and hardest sobs she had ever before. She could sense the bewilderment from the creature, knowing that it was thinking of perhaps using this to its advantage, but it lingered and stumbled. It wouldn’t so much as touch her, but it watched closely as she heaved painful cries. She had never felt so much pain and helplessness in her life. She couldn’t even float like the other kids. It tried to kill her but she just pushed back and it worked. It really worked. She fought it and it was actually frightened by the attack. She made it feel fear for the first time. After thinking about its reaction, she realized that it was probably the first time anyone was ever successful at pushing back when it had them pinned down. 

 

It was probably the first time it had ever been pushed like that. With that in mind, she glanced at the creature who still leered over her, wondering why she was behaving so strangely and remembered that it had emotions too; chemicals prancing about its brain telling it how to react and how to feel. There was no telling what sort of emotions it had or if it had any beyond anger, hunger, greed, and murderous delight, but there was something radiating off of it that she had never seen radiate off of anyone or anything before. It was a new emotion; unnamed and unknown. It was something that perhaps only  _ it  _ could feel. 

 

And there she cried. The tears dripped off of her chin and spread into the water. She fell her to her hands and knees and squeezed her eyes shut, begging to die. Life without Jane and just the thought of seeing Haley in her funeral casket was enough to transfix her onto a path which only led her to the darkest of tunnels. It was pitch black and quiet and it had no end. It was infinitely dark and the longer you walked, the less there was of yourself to lose. Soon enough, you would die and never know who you were, what you did, or even that you ever existed. You would still have a body to leave behind, but you would leave and disappear. There would be no  _ you _ anymore.

 

She shook and her chest tightened. Every breath she took was loud and desperate between agonizing sobs. It hurt so much that she thought she might die of suffocation or even just extreme pain. She hadn’t cried in years and yet she had never imagined that she would cry now. She thought that she would be able to bottle it and die alone without mourning, but now that the realization came over her that it hadn’t worked and while thousands of little kids were floating, she had somehow come down and survived. She was alive and they were all dead. Everyone was dead. Haley was better off not knowing where her sister was than dead. Her mother was probably worried sick by now and perhaps, when she was either dead or missing for so long that she was presumed dead, she would try to find her. 

 

She didn’t want her mother to look for her. She didn’t want her to die. No one deserved to die for her. No one. No one should’ve. She couldn’t look at the clown, but she felt its eyes on her, staring silently. She felt a hand grab her face, but it wasn’t bruising and aggressive like before. It was tenderly and strangely softly. She didn’t think it could be gentle in any way. It was strange and she wasn’t sure whether or not to fall for it, but it lifted her face so that she was looking at it in the eyes and the deadlights appeared again, shining brilliantly from its pupils. She thought,  _ Maybe this time, it’ll work. _ She still wept, the little hiccups coming from her chest were now uncontrollable, but her sobbing ceased.

 

All she could do or remember doing was looking right into those lights and seeing little stars. She saw blackness and then a constellation, a few little lights that circled about one another, and then through them what seemed to be a creature moving slowly towards her.

 

_ The turtle. _

 

But it was over before it could even release her from its hand. She found herself staring back into its eyes, reading its face, trying to look through her reflection in its glassy pupils to find an answer to her question of why she was still there, but even  _ it  _ couldn’t answer that. They just stared there for a moment, both seemingly in disbelief, but both frustrated at one another. Ronnie couldn’t help but to be more frustrated with herself for staying despite her lack of choice and  _ it  _ was frustrated because it was still hungry, but its meal wasn’t edible. 

 

It was like craving a red and juicy apple, but when you pick it up, you see that it’s rotten and have to throw it away, but  _ it  _ couldn’t throw her away.

 

_ The turtle made me. It gave birth to me just to use me as a weapon. It wants me to kill it. It wants me to stay. I don’t want to. I don’t want to kill it. I want to save Haley. I want to die. Why can’t you do that? Why can’t you let me die? It’s what I want! It’s better than this! I don’t want this! Who? Who does this? He needs me, but I won’t do it. I won’t help him. He did this to me. He made me come down here. He probably even used Jane as bait. He made it, so why can’t he get rid of it on his own? What does he need me for? I don’t know, but he does... _

 

“What are you?” the clown asked angrily. A small tension came between them, but Ronnie replied with a voice that wavered in sadness and frustration that was directed inward, barely out anymore.

 

“I’m the one that he needs.”

 

“HE!” It snapped.

 

“The turtle. He needs me. You can’t kill me because…”

 

There was a pause. It was too unbearable, but  _ it  _ seemed far more irritated by it than she was.

 

“Because what?” it groaned impatiently.

 

“Because that’s how he made me. Like you. He made me...like you.”

 

Their blue eyes crossed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this goes a bit quick, but I didn't wanna lag too much on the stuff that happens between dialogue, so hopefully this wasn't too confusing. Anyhow, hope you have enjoyed the story so far (:


	6. Black Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How did Jason really die?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can guarantee that there will be a lot more of Pennywise from here on, but I just wanted to include this chapter in order to show that despite some of the things that happen later on, he is still a creature that eats kids. That's still important, but there is more to Jason's death than meets the eye. Can you figure it out?

The bike pedals were rusty and squeaked every time Jason pushed down the pedals. His dad gave him his old bike and the thing had to be fixed up for his birthday, but it broke again just a few days later. The chain kept coming loose every now and then and the brakes were weak. Whenever Jason had to press on it, he had to press so hard that his knuckles turned white before the bike would come to a stop. He nearly went right through the stop sign at the end of the sidewalk the first time he rode it and it scared the hell out of him, so every time he had to cross the road, he would get off of it and walk. He did this every day from school and back, but sometimes he would take a ride just for the hell of it. 

 

The bike wasn’t that great but it was his bike. It felt good to finally have something of his own and it was the best gift from his dad that he ever got. He was eight years old and learned how to ride a bike when he was six. He was proud of his ability to learn things so quickly, especially when it came to stuff that would get him places. Literally.

 

“Remember to stay on the sidewalk, okay?” His mommy shouted from the porch.

 

“Okay! Bye mommy!” He called back as he pedalled away. The winter wind was cold and icy, but he still wanted to take a ride. He wrapped warm in his blue winter coat, black round mittens, bright green cotton hat, and blue winter boots. His mommy offered to wrap her scarf around him, but it made him itch so he insisted that she didn’t. He didn’t like scarves either. They were too girly for him. All the kids at school made fun of a kid named Norman for wearing scarves to school. His mommy made him wear scarves because he was sensitive to the cold, but he didn’t like wearing them. He took them off sometimes, but the other kids would wrap it around him and sing, “Oh-Mummy, mummy, mummy! You’re lookin’ kinda funny!” 

 

It was two jokes in one; half about his scarves, the other half about a kids show that he was caught watching a year ago and the other boys never stopped teasing him about it. He stopped watching the show, but he still got teased. That’s what boys did. They teased until some kid punched them in the face, but no one was man enough to do it. No siree. No way. Uh-uh. Never. No one stood up to the boys. Not even Jason. Not even Norman. Norman just kept taking the heat like he was soaking up the sun on a long and quiet beach. He was skinny, pale and freckled, had a slicked and quiffed full head of brown hair, brown eyes and bushy eyebrows, and worst of all, he had asthma. He wheezed whenever the kids would come up behind him and scare him just for laughs.

 

They’d watch him bend over and breathe like he was sucking in through a thin tube and then pat his back, strain their brows over their eyelids and say, “Hey, mummy boy, y’alright? Ya sound a little wheezy. Put on yer scarf and maybe it’ll help ya!” That really got on Norman’s nerves. He hated being called ‘mummy boy.’ It was a stupid nickname. It made him sound like a loser and he wasn’t a loser. He wasn’t mummy’s boy, he was Norman. Good ol’ Norman. The only Norman that he knew and Jason was his only friend. He was the only one who understood how sensitive he was. He hated being scrawny. He hated his asthma. He hated his mummy sometimes for patting down his hair and wrapping those ugly scarves around his neck like they were dog collars. Jason was the only one who didn’t care what he had wrapped around him, but mostly cared about what was coiled up inside. 

 

Jason saw the neighbor’s mailbox and thought it looked like a red hammer, kind of like the one that Norman had in his dad’s garage. Although he was scrawny, he could swing that thing like thor. They were in his garage once making parts of their treehouse when Jason wanted to see who could hit the nail the hardest, so they set up a plank and tapped a nail into it. Jason watched as Norman rolled up his sleeve and took the hammer, his hand steady as the weight was clenched between his fingers. His face looked determined and fixated. His eyebrows seemed to curve and droop above his eyes and he licked his lips, leaving streaks of wet saliva to shine off of the curves of his lips. 

 

He brought it down harder than Jason ever expected. He cocked his arm back, veins popping and everything, and with a manly grunt, he whammed it down on the head. There was a  _ cling _ and a  _ crrracck!  _ The nail drove so far into the wood that the plank split and nearly fell apart. The nail had gone right through it and the head had disappeared into the wood, leaving nothing but a crack and hole where the nail was supposed to be. It was fast and precise and Jason had to take a step back to make sure he didn’t get rammed by the head of the hammer. He was sure that the plank would crack in half, but it remained just barely intact. They both looked at each other, shock pulling back into smiles, and Jason gave him an up-high before they set the plank aside and ripped out a new one. 

 

Though Jason’s blow wasn’t as strong, he still hit it. Jason was always jealous at how surprisingly good Norman was at a lot of things; fishing, hunting, building, fixing, biking, and he was a genius at painting. It was the only artistic aspect of Norman that Jason ever saw at first, but then he realized that he really did think like some kind of art extraordinaire. Norman was the superhero and Jason was his sidekick and neither of them argued over who got to be who because they both knew that they belonged to be one or the other. Jason knew he could never one up to Norman, so he stayed by his side no matter what and helped him with almost everything.

 

What he meant by “almost” was that he never helped Norman when they went out fishing with his dad. Just being out in the water made his knees tremble. He was surprised when he made it onto the boat, but he never went fishing with him ever again. Ever since Jason could remember, he had what his mommy called “hydrophobia” which is the fear of water. It was the first big word he ever learned and it was the only big word he could really remember. He always struggled with big words like “flabbergasted” and “tinnitus.” His dad got tinnitus and it made it hard for him to understand Jason sometimes when he talked to him. He didn’t really know what it was, but he guessed that it was some kind of disease or something that made you go deaf. 

 

His daddy also tried to teach him how to say “flabbergasted,” but “flabber” always turned into “flutter” in his mouth and “gasted” would turn into “gusted.” He didn’t like big words anyways. They just never worked out. Norman never made fun of him though. That was the best thing about Norman. He never made fun of anyone even if they had some kind of facial deformity that made them look kind of funny. Jason had a big birthmark right on the side of his head and all of the other kids would look at him funny and laugh whenever they thought he wasn’t paying attention to them, but Norman said it was cool and made him look tough. He’d sometimes show him some of his other marks too.

 

He had one on his right shoulder and one big one on his stomach. His mommy said that it was normal to have birthmarks, but none of the other kids had birthmarks and big and quantitative as his. That was another word he couldn’t get; quantitative. He couldn’t say it, but he thought it was kind of a cool word, so he would try to say it when he could. It never worked out though and he would make himself look like a fool.

 

He made engine noises with his mouth as he squeaked down the street, disobeying his mother by staying in the road. The wind played with his hair, spreading its venom around his face as he picked up the speed. The water near the cracks on the roads hadn’t yet iced over, but the canal had. His mommy told him to stay away from the canal until it melted out, but he was eager to do a bit of skating even though his skates were too small for him now. He was gonna have to wear his usual boots instead. It was even more fun when the ice was a bit wet over the top, kind of like an ice cream sundae. The top was full of all the liquid stuff and toppings, like fudge or caramel and sprinkles, and then the bottom was the ice cream.

 

In this case, the water was the fudge and the ice was the ice cream. It just made it ten times better. He liked sliding over it as though he was a figure skater, but he was always by himself. He was afraid of the water, that was true, but he loved ice. It was a bit ironic that he liked one but not the other since even he knew that you couldn’t have one without the other, but that didn’t stop him from pulling on his winter boots every once in a while to take a spin. This year was especially cold, but he didn’t mind the frosty air. He never minded the cold, which is probably why he’d had frostbite twice, but it was the water that he was afraid of.

 

He was afraid that it might drag him down into the deep ocean and devour him. He had a dream about it once and that was why he began to tremble. He could stand on ice, but he couldn’t look down at the water. He just liked the feeling. That was all. It was nice and smooth and he glided like a real figure skater, but he never looked down. He sped up as he reached the end of the street and began to make his way towards Second Hand Rose. That was where his mommy liked to buy food. She would bring him with her sometimes and he had to stay real close to her because he wasn’t too good around strangers. Just the ones that would bend down and talk to him in really soft voices, though. He didn’t mind the little ones.

 

He turned the corner and saw the Tracker Bros Trucking Company between the gaps of the trees. It came into full view when he pedaled closer and he watched as a truck pulled out and started making its way down the road, probably towards someplace out of town. He didn’t give a hoot about what was in those trucks, but the trucks sure were nice. All big and heavy and he liked to imagine what it must be like to cruise one of those things down the highway. His uncle had a truck, but he lived down in New Jersey, so he only ever got to see him during the summer. He wouldn’t take him cruising, but he would let him sit in it sometimes and let his imagination run wild. He’d make engine noises and grasp the wheel, pretending like he was firing down the highway at top speed and passing every car on the way, showing everyone how big he was and how big of a truck he had, but he was so little that he could barely see over the dashboard. 

 

He continued making engine noises as he imagined himself driving a truck just like the one he saw and the road was his highway. He sped as fast as he could toward the bridge where he stopped and looked over at the canal, still sheeted with ice and snow. A faint and familiar smile etched across his face, the kind that was a national treasure, and suddenly, he felt like a sovereign. He saw the ice, slick and unstable, and he was ready to conquer it and no one would stop him. His mother was at home tending to dinner, his father was at work, and there were no other adults around to tell him that he couldn’t do it.

 

They liked to lie to him like that. He knew that it wasn’t because he  _ couldn’t  _ do it, but rather he wasn’t  _ supposed _ to. That was the difference between his world and the grown up world. He knew what he could and couldn’t do. Most adults didn’t do a lot of things because they thought that they couldn’t, but they really could. So he threw his bike onto the ground, almost immediately forgetting how fragile it was, but he didn’t give a hoot. He put one cautious foot on the ice and he was free. He put the other and he was as a king; the king of the ice. He giggled in a childlike manner and wondered if he could see anything in the ice if he wiped away some of the snow, but not before he took a spin.

 

He thought of all of his imaginary friends skating with him, their laughter blending into a genuine beauty, but the beauty wasn’t something you could see. You had to  _ feel  _ it. It was there, alright, but only he could feel it. They weren’t real, those friends, but he was glad that they were there. Norman was the only real friend he had and he was sick, so he couldn’t play with him for a while. Norman was always getting sick during the winter. He’d cough and Jason would turn and frown.

 

“You coughin’ up a storm again, Norman? You keep gettin’ sick and yer gonna get in trouble with Mrs. Keller. Ya know how much she hates kids that get sick.”

 

Norman sighed exasperatedly. 

 

“I know. My mom says I’m sensitive. Duh ya think I’m sensitive? Like she says?”

 

“Nah, Norman. Yer body just doesn’t like you. Some people are born in bodies that aren’t that good ‘cause even if they look good, they don’t work the way they need to. Yers is just different is all.” 

 

Norman nodded and something shifted in the air. It wasn’t just that they could comprehend one another so simply, but also because they both knew that even though Jason was the youngest, he had to take care of Norman like a little brother.

 

“My mom says it’s my asthma.”

 

Jason sneered teasingly.

 

“Sucks to your ass-mar!” he said in a voice was was high and nasally. They both laughed and Jason let out a loud snort that made them laugh even more. He thought about that kind of laughter, the good and fulfilling kind, as he slid across the ice and nearly fell when he pushed a little further into the open. He felt like he was learning how to walk all over again, all wobbly and unsure, but he couldn’t be afraid. He wasn’t  _ supposed  _ to feel afraid. For once, he lied. He was afraid of the water below, no doubt, but he wasn’t  _ supposed  _ to be. He didn’t  _ want _ to be either, which bothered him even more.

 

The laughter faded towards the center of his mind, making it clear that he was alone on the ice. After a while of roaming about, slipping once or twice, he saw his bike, abandoned in the snow near the bridge, and decided to retrieve it and head home where his mother would call him out for dinner soon. He began to shuffle his way towards the waterbank, careful not to lose balance, but one of his feet gave way beneath him when he hit black ice and he tried to use his hand to break his fall, but it got caught beneath the weight of his body as he crashed into the ice. Although it didn’t break, it cracked, giving him the impression that he was going to fall through. Fear immediately sparked within his chest and he scrambled to get to his feet, only to collapse towards the ice once more.

 

_ I’m stuck! I can’t get up! _

 

He tried to use the hand that he landed on to hoist himself back up, but it ached. The area around his wrist was in searing pain, making it almost impossible to move without even a grunt. He cradled his wrist, hoping it wasn’t hurt too badly, and tried to get up using just his legs. He threw his leg up into a kneeling position and tried to push himself up, but his foot once again slipped from beneath him and he crashed down again, hitting his shoulder this time. The ice cracked once more, driving him into a state of desperate panic. The sound of the frozen ground beneath him erupting in blistered cries made him tremble in fear. He wasn’t  _ supposed  _ to be afraid, but he inevitably was and this was the moment that he began having compunctious feelings of acceptance. He couldn’t lie anymore.

 

He was scared and then the ground gave way. He heard a splitting noise and felt something cold take hold of his small body. It enveloped him and swallowed him mercilessly. The world beyond his eyelids was almost completely dark save the light that reached for him from the hole through which he collapsed. Though he couldn’t see, he felt something grab his ankle. He kicked at it, hoping that it would lose its grip, but it remained chained around him like a shackle. The water was cold and it bit every side of him. It was worse than frostbite at first, but it settled as he struggled to swim back towards the surface. With the tugging hand that hungrily grasped at him, the inability to see much, and the thick ice that trapped him beneath its surface, a terrible realization wafted over him.

 

_ Mommy, I’m scared. _

 

He squeezed his eyes tightly and reopened them to be sure that he wasn’t having another nightmare, but he never woke up. The world beyond his eyes was an endless sea of black water. The ice wasn’t nearly transparent enough to allow much sunlight and the deeper the hand dragged him, the farther away from any hope of seeing it again he drifted. His heart nearly throbbed in his chest at the terrible realization that he was on the verge of death. He wasn’t safely tucked at home with his mommy and daddy anymore. He was the Titanic and he just hit the iceberg, or rather, he was trapped underneath it, and he felt a thousand miles away from home. 

 

He was no longer free, but the moment he reached his hand towards the last bit of sunlight in sight, he was extricated. The hand that clutched his ankle so firmly weakened around his foot and then opened. Its powerful fingers were no longer crushing his bone, which he was sure had just broken a moment ago, but he was too scared to yelp and there was too much water. He couldn’t let the water into his lungs, so he just opened his mouth and his sobs sufficed. He didn’t dare look down at the creature that had just grabbed him and he began to claw posthaste towards the surface. He had never felt so much adrenaline in his life and though he liked the things in life that were thrilling, like carnival rides and tearing down the highway in a heavily loaded truck, this wasn’t one that he could ever enjoy. 

 

He thought that his heart would fly into his throat, but it grasped onto his ribcage and held on as tightly as it could. He couldn’t tell whether he was going to be able to push to the surface without passing out, or “falling asleep out of nowhere” as his mother put it when he passed out due to a fever two years ago, but he wanted to get the hell out of that terrible water and away from that horrid creature. He didn’t care what it looked like or what it wanted, he just wanted it as far away from him as it could possibly be. It felt like forever, more like an  _ eternity _ , before he found himself pressing himself up against the ice.

 

He searched frantically for the spot where he fell and found it a few feet away, but it was against the slow current that still churned from beneath the ice somehow, bullying the stability of the ice. It was no wonder that he ended up falling through. 

 

_ I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t uh come here. I shoulduh just stayed on my bike and gone the other way. I wanna go home. _

 

He pressed his hands against the cold ice and tried to push his way towards the opening. He could feel himself getting lightheaded. His lungs were starting to desperately jerk and spasm, striving to take involuntary breaths before he lost it, but he couldn’t breathe just yet. He had to get into the fresh air first, so he pushed onward. It felt as though all of the little bones that made up his hands were freezing slowly, making it difficult for him to have a strong grip. They would slip back sometimes, giving him the impression of being carried away by the current, but he would regain his grip just as soon as he lost it.

 

He crawled like an insect towards the opening, desperately trying to keep his eyes open and his lungs clenched tight. He took one involuntary breath, quick and unexpected, and immediately reacted by attempting to cough it out again, but it only invited more black water into his lungs. He choked, realizing now that he had made a grave mistake, and began to push in a pounding surge of distraught. He could feel the creases in his face becoming deeper and larger, his lungs burning with too much of what was once something that he drank to keep himself afloat in a world of big bad wolves, but was now a hand dragging him deeper down in a world of blackness and fear. 

 

He had avoided the big bad wolves up until this point, but now he could see them, swimming toward him from the bottom of the canal. It wasn’t supposed to be this deep, but it looked like it was deep enough to become the ocean. He reached his arm across the ice to try and grab onto the side of the opening and felt the ice press against his hand. Some of the snow melted against his hand, letting him know that there was still some warmth in his body.

 

_ Imma make it! Imma get out! Just one more push an’ I’ll be okay! I’ll be okay! _

 

But it wasn’t okay just yet. He still had that one last glorious burst of strength to overcome, but there was a single wolf, swimming closer with his lips pulled back into a grinning sneer, his eyes bursting with yellow funnels that went deeper and deeper into his head. He kicked towards him, desperate to have a bite of his skinny arm. He jerked himself forward, clambering towards the opening in a heap of uncontrollable trepidation. His heart leaped into his throat and stayed there, unwilling to come back down. He grabbed the sides of the opening with both hands and kicked his legs, one of them flailing loosely due to his broken ankle. 

 

He winced in pain, but the freezing water made it bearable. His ankle was nearly frozen over by now, probably becoming numb, but he could still feel the bone move from inside of his body. It didn’t feel right. Something wasn’t right. Something was wrong. He brought his face to the surface, bursting through the barricade of water and allowing the freezing air to spread over his skin like a quickly solidifying sheet of ice. Gasping, his hands reached for something to grasp onto, but there was only the disturbed snow and ice. He used his elbows to hoist himself up and began to crawl out of the hole like a larva that was being born. 

 

He was wet and dripping, making the ice even more slippery, but he miraculously scurried away from the hole on his arms and knees, trying not to stand due to his injured foot. He coughed up a splatter of water that still hadn’t escaped his lungs. He had been choking on it as he was struggling to make his way out, but it was too stubborn. He was still coughing, but there was nothing to choke on anymore. Every breath he took felt like a spear to the chest. Though he was cold and shivering, his breath visible in the winter air, he turned around to breathe, every breath made a gift.

 

He dragged himself towards the bank, his eyes closed as the relief washed over him, and he opened his eyes to look at the hole he had just emerged out of. His heart sank back down into his chest. His gasps hitched in his chest. For a body so small like his, this kind of reaction was new. He had never felt so terrified in his life.

 

“Where ya goin’, mommy boy?” the voice gurgled from within the hole. At first, he thought he’d heard wrong, but then it came to him in a clash of frightening thoughts: There was someone in the water. He looked closer and identified a head peering out at him from within the hole. Although it was difficult to tell at first, he eventually recognized a face. The eyes were a daring yellow, but the rest of it was makeup that smeared from the water. It had dark circles under its eyes and its red hair was wet and clung to its face in clumps. There was no telling whether it was really a person or some kind of monster, but it was certainly there, mocking him.

 

“Why aren’tcha at home with mommy?” It spoke again, but this time, Jason felt obliged to reply in a cracking voice.

 

“Who are you?” He asked, too scared to look away. The clown slapped on a menacing grin.

 

“I’m everything you’ve ever feared,” it began in a deep and inhuman voice, but it quickly changed, “and I’m gonna kill ya!” It giggled almost innocently as though its words were out of the mouth of a child who was asking for candy from their mother. They were terrifying yet said in such a friendly voice. Jason instantly felt the panic rise within him once more and he tried to scramble back to his feet, but his ankle suddenly began to ache. The effects of the freezing water were wearing off and now the pain shot up his leg at full capacity. He cried out and held his ankle, but he didn’t want to remain in the same spot. He had to move or he was going to die.

 

So he limped away, barely staying on his feet, and his breath became heavier as he tried to run towards his bike. All he could think about was going home to mommy and daddy, to Norman, and to his uncle’s truck. He wanted to believe so badly that he could get out of this alive, but there was a heavy doubt in his mind that clung to every nook and cranny of the house that was his skull. He didn’t dare turn his head, but he could hear it gaining on him so quick that he was sure to lose its game of chase. He ran desperately, his short and skinny legs fighting for the bike pedals, but then it came.

 

That beautiful bike, all old and squeaky but still kicking, leaving his touch for one last time. It yanked him away and threw him towards the ice where the last thing he felt was the impact of the cold surface shattering his skull the way Norman shattered the wooden plank with his hammer. He wasn’t scared anymore. 

 

You’re not  _ supposed  _ to be scared when you’re frozen dead beneath the snow.

 


	7. Like A Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Ronnie learns everything as to why the deadlights don't work, she begins to realize more than what she could have ever imagined and now Pennywise is using what he knows of humans to take advantage of the situation.

It had eyes that were almost innocent. They were a vibrant ocean blue, much like Matilda’s. 

 

_ Much line mine. _

 

She couldn’t discard the thought. It was staring at her immensely, begging for her to listen to it, but It’s eyes were so close that she could dive into them.

 

_ Much like Matilda’s. _

 

She couldn’t discard that one either, so she pondered. She only had a moment to do so, but she couldn’t take it for granted. Her mouth opened and all that came out didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t control it either. Her mouth simply moved without any correlation to her thoughts. It was as though she was being controlled again and it frustrated her. She could barely breathe between sentences too, making it feel as though she was suffocating herself with words.

 

“He got sick and you threw up and spat you out. You weren’t supposed to happen. None of this was meant to be. The Losers Club is just the beginning. They were the frontier. They can kill you but you always come back. They always come back, but they’re dead. They won’t be. They’re gone. All dead. All g-g-gone. And th-they were tuh-tuh-together, B-B-B-B-Bill and Ri-Ri-Richie and S-Stanley and B-B-B-B-Beverly and M-M-Mike a-a-a-and Ed-Eddie and B-B-Ben. Th-Th-They w-w-won’t be coming b-b-b-back. It’s just me. Just m-m-me. I h-have to d-d-do it.” She pushed through the movement of her jaw with a howl that rebelled against the thing that was controlling her. 

 

“NO!”

 

“You have to!” The voice snapped back using her own mouth. “If you don’t, I’ll send some more and they’ll kill Haley! Don’t think I won’t! I MADE YOU!”

 

The clown watched in bewilderment, but it wasn’t entirely apparent. He stood, slightly backed away now that the conversation between Ronnie and the turtle had unfolded. Perhaps it was that he -IT- had never heard the turtle speak to anyone. 

 

“FUCK YOU!” She snapped. Pennywise remained distant, but it witnessed the entire ordeal, unsure as to how it should approach it. For once, the creature didn’t know what to do. Ronnie was panting, so overcome by some sort of invisible powerful force that it felt as though her entire body was fighting for dominance. She was furious. In fact, she had never been this upset in her entire life. To find that her entire existence, from birth until this moment, was all just so that she could do a celestial being’s dirty work wasn’t what she had ever had in mind for her life. She didn’t want to kill anything or anyone. It may have taken Jane, but by killing It, then it was the equivalence of being a murderer herself.

 

“And if it kills more kids? Won’t that make you their murderer as well?” the turtle asked in a challenging tone. It was strange to hear her own voice but have the words come from something other than her thoughts. What was even worse was that it was being rational. If more kids like Jane were eaten or killed, then it was on her hands, but it felt so wrong. Maybe she was more human than she thought by thinking that killing a serial killer was wrong, but this wasn’t even human. 

 

_ It’s not even the last of its kind anymore. I’m the second piece; the second mistake. It wasn’t just that  _ he  _ wasn’t supposed to happen, but  _ we _.  _ We _ weren’t supposed to happen. _

  
  


“All you had to do was look in those lights and now you’re here. This is your fault. I didn’t make you just so that you could have morals. I made you so that you could erase what I’ve done because I can’t do it. I can’t touch It. It’s untouchable, in a sort of way, and you’re the only one who can do it. All you have to do is use both of your deadlights at the same time while looking at each other. It’s quick and painless. It’ll confuse the both of you and you’ll both float. You’ll both die eventually and then return twenty seven years later, but you’ll remain in your dream state. You’ll never wake up. I can give you good dreams, if you want. I can make you dream of Jane. I can give you the illusion that you’re living your life, but you won’t be.

 

I will give you everything you’ve ever wished for. Just say it and I’ll make it happen. Just do it. You no longer have a choice. I’ll kill her if you don’t. I swear I will. You have to. No choice, so do it now while It’s here in front of you. It has no choice but to keep you alive, anyway. If It doesn’t have you, then I’ll have no choice but to send the Losers back and they’ll make It starve. I’ll keep sending more too. Like I said, they’re the frontier, you’re the commander. You’ll grow hungrier the longer you wait and then you’ll become It. You don’t want that, do you? So, KILL IT!” It whispered at first, but then it gradually grew louder before it was finally screaming.

 

“KILL IT, RONNIE! KILL IT!”

 

_ Kill it, Billie! Kill it! _

 

“Shut up! You killed Jane! Shut up!” She cried out, her hands thrown up and resting against her face to hide her frustration. He, the turtle, sounded worse than the clown. For once, she was frightened, but not by the clown; by It’s enemy.

 

“You gave it the hunger it suffers from and for some reason, you can’t take it away? It’s not my fault that you made me. We may be in dream states, but we’ll be hungry. That’s the worst kind of hell. Fuck that.” She managed to quiver the last few words out, but they came out between small whimpers. “I’m not a killer.” And that was the most human thing she could have said. For a moment, there was a pause, and it was almost as though he was about to give up, but this was a celestial being that was speaking, not a troubled human being. Unlike Ronnie, it couldn’t even give up if it had to expand the laws of nature.

 

“If you don’t want to kill it, then kill yourself before you become It and I will send another.” He had said it in such a cold tone. It was as though all that he cared about was getting rid of the damn thing, but that wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. Life wasn’t fair, but this was beyond that. This was cruel.

 

“You can’t just use me! I’m a human being, you bastard! Not a reusable part!” She yelled, tears streaming down her face that was streaked with pain. All she could think about was finding a place, any place, to belong in. If she was created just for this and she couldn’t even commit to it, then where did she belong?

 

_ Haley, I’m sorry. I love you so much. I won’t let him hurt you. No one's gonna hurt you. No one and if I do grow hungry like he says, I don’t know if I’ll be able to help it, but I’m gonna do everything I can to be sure that I don’t end up hurting you. I have to do this. It’s the least I can do. _

 

“You’re the second part. You weren’t a mistake Ronnie. I  _ made  _ you and now  _ you _ have to find a way to fix this so that I don’t have to worry about a shapeshifter running around killing children.  _ It _ wasn’t supposed to happen, but you were. You have a purpose and it is to destroy it. If you can’t even do that, then why are you here?”

 

The answer to that was clear and she knew that her reply wasn’t just out of frustration, but almost sympathy for the creature.

 

“Because I just wanted to find out what happened to my sister. Was I wrong to do so?” She gritted her teeth together to prevent herself from falling apart. It felt as though her entire world was collapsing around her and all that was left was the misery that was spilling from inside.

 

“She wasn’t your sister. She was your friend. A very close one, at that, but how are you going to live now that you’re the equivalence of the creature you see before you?”

 

Ronnie glanced up at the creature, wondering the same thing. It looked back, its eyes still blue, processing in the dark sewer light, wondering what was going to happen next, but she didn’t have any surprises up her sleeve. Pennywise always had something to pull out from his hair, but Ronnie had nothing. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to handle something as terrible as this, but the thought of Haley’s casket still poisoned her.

 

“I have to face the dragon.” And she was serious. She stared into his blue eyes, wondering how deep they could go, and thought about Matilda. She was just a little baby and yet she had lost her sister. She would later come to understand that loss, but growing up, it always gets harder. The older you are, the more affected you are. Maybe that was another reason why Pennywise never sought out many adults; their fears were too complex. Ronnie knew that she was barely a child, but she was barely an adult too. She was just the right combination, the midpoint of the entire equation, and to Pennywise, she probably would have been delicious considering her one fear was of a person, but she wasn’t afraid of the creature itself.

 

That’s where  _ he  _ becomes  _ IT. _ The creature wasn’t human, but he sure as hell looked the part and at that very moment, sinking into those blue eyes as they exchanged a long and hard look, it felt as though he really was. Perhaps, after all that had happened while she was down there, it was starting to feel that way too.

 

Human.

 

The turtle was silent and then he had made up his mind. Another agonizing needle of pain was injected into her skull for a moment, releasing a groan from her throat and pushing her eyes towards the back of her head. For a moment, she thought she was going to black out, but the irritation subsided after a moment and she was left with her head hanging, trying to regain her senses. Her vision was blurred for a moment, leading her to believe that she was about to lose her eyesight, but after a moment of adjustment, her vision corrected itself and she could see the clown clearly again.

 

The pain was gone, but there was a terrible exhaustion that overwhelmed her whole body. Her head felt like a ginormous weight that was trying to balance itself on her shoulders, her legs felt weak and unstable, her shoulders fell into a slump, and her spine curved and bent forward, straining to hold together the rest of her weight. She felt like her bones were about to strip themselves of her flesh just so that they didn’t have to carry it anymore. Sweat dotted her forehead and she knew that she was about to collapse, but she couldn’t stop herself. She had forgotten how to stand and let herself collapse beneath the weight of the world.

 

In this case, actually, it may have been the universe too. After all, that was another thing that the turtle spat out. IT was just one of his many mistakes. Perhaps, too many to take care of on his own. The cold ground felt nicer than standing despite that it was powdered with grime and the moment she hit it, she could feel herself drawing closer to the earth, wishing that some sort of eternal rest would come, but it didn’t. The clown stood, thinking, processing, growing frustrated, and then thinking again. He stood away for a moment, watching as she grew weaker, but it wasn’t until he saw the blood trickling down her philtrum and over her lips. It really was him. The turtle.

 

It was like finding out that you had the choice of either protecting a million dollars or giving it to someone who’s going to use it against you. Any rational being, human or not, would take the upper hand; keep the million dollars. So he shuffled towards her, not saying a word, and grabbed her by the arm. He lifted her up, cautiously and carefully, trying not to look her in the eyes as he was doing so, and then he held onto her and kept her relatively stable as he ushered her towards a drier spot near the end of one of the tunnels. She was light and skinny. She felt like she didn’t even eat, but looking at her face, she wasn’t malnourished, just skinny. She felt frail though and it felt as though if he just tugged on her arm hard enough, it would tear right off. and There was a bit of water near the mouth of the tunnel, but otherwise it was practically as dry as a desert. He set her down a little hard, making her groan a second time, but he had never cared for anyone.

 

He had never had to protect anything but himself. That was why he could kill so easily, but now if he didn’t learn how to take care of something, then he was going to starve. He didn’t even know how to feel sorry, so he didn't. He just turned around, grabbed whatever he could find from the heaps of belongings of all of the floating children, and pulled a small blue blankie, about half of her size, over her shoulders. Though it wasn’t much, it was enough to keep her from getting a chill. The blanket was soft, but part of it was torn due to getting hooked on a branch as he dragged the child into the sewers. It was over thirty years old and yet it hadn’t been touched since it was new. Now it was battered and stained with a bit of grime, but it was well off of the ground when he found it, so he assumed it wasn’t plagued by any diseases.

 

On top of that, it looked cleaner than all of the other possible sources of warmth. He never felt cold, so it was difficult for him to conceive this strange adaptation that humans hadn’t evolved into yet. He had been living on this earth long before them, so he had gotten used to the temperatures, no matter how high and no matter how low. He was there just after the earth was but volcanoes and he endured the ice age. He couldn’t feel the chill, but she could and that was the only reason that such a small and forgotten object was put to use, because humans just weren’t used to the earth yet. They were still vulnerable to millions of different diseases and would fret over each and every newly discovered illness.

 

He had always thought that fear was humanity’s largest vulnerability, but it wasn’t just that -it was the elements. They were their biggest threat. They could take them at any time and at any pace, extending their misery, or simply putting them out of it. They were pitiful little things and he cocked his head in an explosion of laughter at the sight of their quivering faces, but this one could hold the universe in her frail and shivering body. He saw her readjust herself so that she was warmer, pulling the blanket closer, her face sickly pale yet graceful. She had curls of red hair that reached just passed her shoulders, her bangs sprawled across her cheeks, her nose dusted with small freckles, her boots too heavy for her feet, her thin raincoat now stained with dirt and still slightly wet at the rim, and beneath her raincoat he could make out a grey acrylic sweater.

 

Her nose was streaked with blood. He crouched down and crept a little closer, ready to retreat away if she were to suddenly open her eyes, and he became drawn towards her image, determined to find out what was so strange about it. For a moment, he tilted his head and looked at her face. It was pale and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. Her freckles looked like they were duplicating by the second and her lips, resting in a threaded line, were dry from talking so much. She looked like a corpse, but her breathing gave her subtle signs of life. Although it was dark, his eyes had adapted to the pitch darkness, making it easier for him to see. Unlike her, he had stayed down in the dark for so long that he didn’t need light. He didn’t need to look up at the surface when he could live at the bottom, but she was the shred of light that came from the surface that for some reason, he needed.

 

So he crept just a little bit closer, keeping a close eye, and with a steady hand, he wiped the blood from her nose. The gesture felt caring which made it slightly uncomfortable. At last, caring. He cared.  _ Oh, no. _ This couldn’t have been happening. After all of that time spent feeding off of the fear of children, the moment one of them wanders in and faces him with his enemy to accompany him, he felt a quiver hum through his bones. He felt cold and as he sheathed his hand away from Ronnie’s face,  he looked at the blood that was now a long streak on his white glove, making it pop out like a sore thumb. He had never really thought about it, but blood was one of the most precious things to humans. He had dealt with people who were afraid of blood and managed to give them a real gory fright, but it was always inside them, keeping them alive, giving them strength. Most just never really thought about it.

 

He wondered if maybe there was more that he could use to his advantage than just their fear. Perhaps, in a way, he just had to deprive them of whatever their ‘blood’ was. For Ronnie, that was Haley, her only sister left, but he couldn’t even eat her, so what was the point? He ran his tongue over the stain, tasting the strong savor of iron and sweet plasma. It was a strong taste that he could never resist, but it was sweeter than ever this time. It was gloriously appetizing and he imagined that it was very similar to how it felt for humans to lick lollipops. At first, it made his tongue recoil for just a second, but then it curled around it, wanting more. He looked at Ronnie and thought the only thought he ever had towards tasting blood and that was to have a taste at some of their other insides, but he just stared, his hungry eyes wide open and wild.

 

His eyes were set on her, her legs and her arms, so skinny yet so full of blood and tissue and tendons and coats of muscle. He licked his lips, bits of blood grazing over his tongue, making him feel hungrier, but he couldn’t move. From now on, she was his reason for holding back and if he didn’t, then he would starve. He didn’t know for how long, an eternity probably, but it would be long enough to become his own personal hell. He had to restrain his wild and murderous nature, not matter how hungry he became. He had to feed off of someone,  _ anyone  _ but her. It was like trying to hold back a monstrous beast that was snapping his jaw at a dangling piece of meat that was suspended by fishing wire. It would keep chasing after it, but you have to give up its preferences for its own good, so you give it a bone instead of meat and that’ll keep it occupied for some time, but not very long.

 

Staying down there with human flesh so close and taunting was going to be difficult if he wanted to keep her alive. All this time, he wanted her dead and he had his pleasure taunting her with the sight of her deceased sister, but now despite his preferences, he had to choose the bone. He didn’t mind the drool that oozed from his lips and dripped onto his ruffles --he never did, but as he turned away, trying to swallow down the growling in his stomach, he subconsciously wiped his mouth with his thumb. He couldn’t leave her in the sewers by herself. He had no doubt that she would try and escape back home to her sister. He had to keep her where he could see her.

 

He’d already starved once.

 

He stood up and began shuffling around the dump of child belongings. He tossed aside hats, coats, bicycles, toys, shoes, and all other sorts of things that his victims died clinging onto. There was nothing that he could tie her to. The sewers were made up of large pipes too large to wrap anything around and water that smelled of Derry waste. If he couldn’t tie her down, then he was gonna have to tie her somewhere else where he could keep her under his watch, but where would that be?

 

That was just it. It wasn’t exactly a particular  _ place _ that he needed her, but with a particular  _ someone. _ If he wanted to keep her under his watch, then he was going to have to tie her to him. She couldn’t escape. Ever. No matter what. She couldn’t. Period. Now all he had to do was find something to tie her, so he searched for anything at all that he could use that she wasn’t very likely to break which was difficult considering that he was searching through a heap of child’s toys and garments and whatnot. After what felt like a long sequence of throwing items carelessly and digging faster than a mole could burrow through the ground, he blindly grabbed a pair of plastic handcuffs.

 

They were a dull grey and seemed fragile on the outside, but when he gripped them with his hands, they felt sturdy enough for a human. He tried to open them, but they required a key. He followed the plastic chain with his hand and checked the other lock to find that the key was miraculously wedged into it.

 

_ Probably didn’t wanna lose it. Their fears may be different, but they’re all the same. Habits, oh habits. _

 

He tanked the key from the lock and examined it. It was scratched, but otherwise in good shape. He use it to open one of the cuffs and thought about cuffing the two of them now, but then he would have to wait for her to wake up to move around, so he sat beside her and played with the cuffs while he waited. They felt fairly old, no more than fifteen years, but they were all he could manage to fetch out. He tugged them a few times out of boredom, just to see if they would snap, but he didn’t want to tug too hard or they actually would. He had to tug like a human would in order to find out whether or not they would truly keep her in his grasp.

 

He waited. The drips of the water became his ticking clock. After what felt like hours, the sun began to rise. Light began to pour in from the grate above them and he was afraid she would never wake up. He resorted to watching her breathe to kill time and hunger. If he was going to hunt, then he was going to have to take her with him whether she liked it or not. If the turtle was being honest and had really somehow recreated his mistake, then he could use her to his advantage. Humans had something called “trust” and he needed to know how to obtain it. He could ask, but he had seen it before. They would depend on one another in dire situations. He saw it in the Losers club when they came together to kill him.

 

Perhaps the reason why he died was because he didn’t have that and they did. If he could somehow possess it, then perhaps it could be of use to him if they were to ever return. 

 

_ If. _


	8. Boys Will Be Boys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course, since this is based off of a Stephan King novel, we've got more bullies and more death scenes (:

Polly never liked boys. Her dad wanted to go on a hike up Mount Abraham during the summer when she was four. It had been three months since her mother died and her dad wanted to get some air, so he decided to go up and take Polly on her first ever hike. Her three cousins, Rufus, Doug, and Danny, all wanted to come along; so they packed their hiking bags and held burping contests in the car all the way to the foot of the mountain. She hated all three of ‘em. She hated the way they smelled, the way they acted, the way they spoke, and even the way they  _looked._  Danny and Rufus were basically Doug’s minions. They did everything he told ‘em to do and scurried like mice when he would bark an order at ‘em.

 

Hell, he could tell them to hold their breaths for seven minutes and they would do it. He’d yell at them sometimes too just to scare ‘em and make ‘em think that he’d kill ‘em if they didn’t do what they were told. Polly always despised Doug. He had short dirty blonde spiked hair, a straight and somewhat upwardly angled nose that shined sometimes when he moved his head, ears that folded and made him look like a dog, dark chocolate eyes that swirled viciously when he looked directly at Polly, pink lips with a full arch below his nose and a lower lip that was heavy enough to crease above his chin, and a figure that was slim but lean for a ten year old.

 

Rufus wasn’t too scrawny either. His short brown hair was long and combed, but it waved around his jaw and covered his ears, but he still looked unkempt. His bangs were too long to keep around his forehead, so he had to constantly push it back with his fingers or let it hang in his face. He would wear old tank tops to make his muscles pop out and his jeans were always tattered. He wore sneakers that his mom bought for him on his ninth birthday and he wore long white socks that were tucked underneath his jeans, but whenever he rolled his jeans up, it was obvious that they went well up his calves. He was tan but still white and his dark grey eyes accented his slim face. The tip of his nose stuck out at an awkward angle, but his lips were thin and smoothly curved, giving people the impression that he was quiet and thoughtful, but he really had a bad mouth.

 

He sometimes called Polly ‘little girl’ which she very much hated. She couldn’t stand being treated like a baby. Sure, she was only six, but that didn’t make her any less smart. While Doug and Rufus were lean and mean, Danny was big and the only reason why no one bothered him too much about it was ‘cause he could really throw a punch. One time, some older kid was snickering about him and he started to get really pissed off about it, like it really bothered him a lot, and so he stood up and asked him why he was laughing and the kid just looked up at him and went, “‘Cuz yer the fattest pig I ever seen, porkchop!” They started hollering and laughing until they were slapping their knees and that really turned Danny red hot, so he didn’t take a long time before he wound up his arm and gave him a good hit right on the kisser.

 

The kid was really dumbfounded at first, looking at him like he just said something that was terribly rude, and started bleeding everywhere ‘cause one of his front teeth fell out and the other was loose. Of course, Danny got in real trouble, but the kid that got punched lost both of his front teeth and had to go to school with everyone laughing at him. You could smell his humiliation as you walked by him. It was awful to watch. Sure, the kid wasn’t nice, but now no one wanted to play with him because he looked funny and talked kind of weird. It was a little sad, but Polly didn’t care much for boys.

 

Danny was pretty dumb though to say the least. He always went along with Doug and Rufus and agreed with them no matter what was being said. Sometimes, he would accidentally contradict himself, making other people wonder just how much of a moron he really was, but he just wanted to be like Doug and Rufus and look like he had his own opinions on things. However, he didn’t. That was the thing about Danny that made Polly think that he was different from Doug and Rufus; he didn’t really have much of an opinion at all. If anything, it didn’t really seem like he cared too much about anything but having at least one friend. It was kind of sad ‘cause it seemed as though the only reason he had to spend any time with Doug and Rufus was to keep the loneliness at bay, but even with them, it was obvious that he didn’t feel happy.

 

Doug was constantly putting him down and manipulating him into doing things against his will. He had a hell of a good time having burping contests though and still pushed Polly around from time to time. That’s why Polly still couldn’t stand him. Maybe if he just wasn’t brothers with Rufus and Doug, then maybe Polly would’ve found him decent, but that’s what Doug did; He once had Danny and Rufus watch as he pushed Polly into the Kenduskeag while she was wearing her favorite dress. It was her mother’s, but she fixed it up for her so that it wasn’t too shabby. It was blue and it had ruffles around the rim of its skirt and a white baby collar that she had to flatten down every now and then.

 

That day, she was wearing her white t-bar flat sandals and her hair was pulled back into a fishtail braid that was tied using a white ribbon which was tightened into a bow. Her dad took her to the Kenduskeag with Danny, Doug, Rufus, her aunt Karen, and her grandmother to enjoy a bit of summer air. She loved her grandma more than anyone else in the world. She was short due to the growing hunch in her back, she always carried around sweets and knitting needles with a ball of yarn wrapped around them, and she smelled like the roses in her garden. Just like Polly’s mommy, her grandma liked planting flowers and was always outside with her gardening tools tending to them.

 

Polly wasn’t old enough to help much, but she liked packing the soil and watering the roses. She wanted to plant her own garden once she was old enough. Her grandma bought seeds for her to plant once she was ready to do it herself, but she was too little.

 

She was six when her cousins pushed her into the Kenduskeag. She expected it to be a little more shallow, but it was actually quite deep. She flailed around in the water, unable to bring herself to the surface due to the hand that was grabbing at her.

 

Her mommy wanted her to take swimming lessons, but she died before she could ever sign her up for anything and her daddy wasn’t sure if she was old enough yet. She had been standing near the bank with her hand in the water, searching for rocks. She couldn’t find any that were soft like a caillou, so she stepped into the water and started making her way towards the center, desperately looking.

 

Her grandma and daddy were having a conversation about something she couldn’t understand near the treeline, probably too busy talking to pay any attention to little Polly. Doug watched her and snickered with the other boys, probably talking mischief. They were always up to something. Polly heard their laughter and turned around for just a second to see if they were really laughing at her. Doug’s razor sharp eyes were hooked on her, carved by wrinkles that curved above his growing smile. He held his hand up over his mouth and leaned towards Rufus who was cackling at every phrase whispered into his ear. Danny stood with a smirk and his arms folded across his chest. They all looked at Polly as though she was the funniest little idiot they had ever seen.

 

She almost sneered at them, but then she remembered what her grandma told her.

 

“Boys are there to play with her heart and make you angry, so don’t let them in. Don’t become the buffalo when you can be the lion.” She thought of this, unsure as to what all of grandma’s words meant, but she could understand the gist of it. All she had to do was ignore them and keep looking for a caillou.

 

Her grandma called pebbles ‘les cailloux’ because she was half-french, so Polly got into the habit of saying it as well. It was a nice word and she liked the way the sound felt on her tongue, especially the sort of ‘yoo’ part. She had a lot of fun saying it over and over again which annoyed the boys. Her daddy was always trying to get them to get along, but Doug and Danny weren’t having any of it. Rufus was nice to her once when the other boys weren’t around and gave her a little chocolate before smiling at her and running off, but that was as far as his kindness went. Whenever Doug or Danny were around, his mouth would run right off and she would hate him all over again. She began to wonder if he even liked Danny and Doug, but it was apparent that he did take some kind of liking to them that she could never understand, so she didn’t try to.

 

She pushed her little feet through the flowing water, trying to balance against the current despite her tiny body. The sun played on the water and reflected, creating flows of shining silver. The water passed over the rocks and looked like liquid mountains that climbed and then fell down again with each change in the waterbed. She wasn’t afraid to go into the water, but she didn’t want to get swept away, so she stopped after a short distance and bent down in search for her rocks like a hunter looking for tracks. The water was cool against her legs and soaked through her blue dress, making it a darker blue with every drop that clung onto it. She hadn’t bothered to take off her shoes since the rocks hurt her feet, but as she looked down she realized that they had disappeared into the murk of the water.

 

Her hands were covered in the murk as well, but she didn’t mind. She reached further, just enough so that her hand disappeared as well, and felt around. She found some sharper rocks, but she was waiting to feel the smooth surface of her envisioned caillou. She imagined that it would feel nice against her skin; the surface so smooth that it would be like touching a baby’s head. She didn’t find it, but she did see something in the water as she reached a little further. The water was up to her shoulder now and her face was just inches away from the surface, so she saw it as clear as day. At first it looked like a doll floating near the surface, but as it drew closer, she realized that it was much bigger than a doll.

 

It had dark hair that spread away from its head like wings as it was dragged by the current. It had eyes that bore into her soul, grey and unmoving, and pale lips that were sealed into a single line. It had a pale face and arms and legs that were so skinny they almost looked like naked bones. It floated closer, but it wasn’t really touching the surface. It was just beneath it, never making a single bubble or sound. There was just the sounding of the current and the boys snickering behind her. She stared at it for a long and hard moment, trying to figure out what it was. She kept thinking that it was just a doll that came to play, but something was too off about it.

 

It looked too much like a human being.

 

“Eat your stupid rocks!” Doug shouted from just behind her and he pushed her truculently into the water.

 

His strong hands felt gigantic against her back and as she fell face-first into the water, she suddenly felt the impact of the rocks hitting her arm and her wrist bent at a painful angle, but only before her forearm broke some of her fall. In exchange, the skin plunged into a sharp rock that cut through and into the tissue. Her scream cut to gurgling and trying to hold back a gag. The water was cool, but it was murky and tasted a little salty. The taste stung the back of her throat after being caught mid-scream. She hated it and wanted to spit it out, but she would have to sacrifice air to do so and even then, the taste wouldn’t leave. It would sting until she could wash it down and even then the salty aftertaste would remain.

 

She felt the current take her for just a second. Her body was light, but it wasn’t light enough to get carried away like an empty bottle. Some of the water went up her nose and that really made her wriggle in discomfort and panic. She started trying to paddle, but something grabbed her shoulder from her left, making her believe that one of the boys -most likely Doug- was trying to keep her from coming back up. She tried to free the hand, but it remained clamped down. It was the claw and she was the stuffed animal lying at the top of the pile. Once it had its grip on her, she couldn’t wiggle free, so she tried to open her eyes and see what awaited her. Though she had never tried opening her eyes under water before, she knew that it would sting at first.

 

She hated anything that stung, but if it would help her find a way to free herself from the hand that was trapping her, then it was worth the discomfort. She pried them open slowly and quickly closed them again. The water was too dirty and things were trying to float into her eyes, but she opened them once more, trying to get a sense of what it was that she was facing. She pulled them open again, quickly this time, and though her vision was blurred and all she could hear was the muffled sound of water in her ears, she swore that she saw a boy. She would’ve bet all of her fingers and toes that it was a boy and it frightened even more. Though it wasn’t anyone in Doug’s little gang, it was a boy.

 

Polly hated boys. Couldn’t stand them. Didn't want to. Yet it was a boy that was gripping onto her like a parasite sucking on exposed skin. She closed her eyes for just a moment, just long enough to let the stinging subside a little, before reopening them and letting the image come into focus.

 

_Come with me, Polly. You’ll float down here. We all float down here._

 

The voice was raspy and yet somehow clear despite the water. Bubbles rose from the boy’s mouth and passed through his rising hair. He had a birthmark that made the side of his face look like it was a map of California. His eyes were white and glassed over like they were decaying from inside of their sockets, but were somehow kept preserved. They didn’t look real. She could only compare them to the eyes of her dolls back at home; lifeless behind glass. What should have been his fingernails peeking through his black mittens was instead a black moss that seemed to be growing over the fleshy rotting skin. Is face was almost blue and his lips were white around the edges, but dark blue and black around the opening of his mouth.

 

As he spoke, she saw that his four remaining teeth were rotting inside of his gums and the rest were replaced with some kind of moss. He was wearing a winter coat and blue boots that remained relaxed behind him. He didn’t seem to be swimming, but floating. He was floating.

 

_Boys will be boys. You don’t want Doug to hurt you again, do you? He’s gonna hurt you if you don't’t come with me. He sure will. No question. We can float together. They won’t come. Just us, Polly. Just you and me._

 

The current picked up and she found herself suddenly rolling over rocks. Although she had thought that she was going to die right then and there, another hand grabbed at her other arm and just as that hand began to pull, the boy began to let go. He smiled a rotted smile and waved a good-bye before disappearing into the murks of the water.

 

“C’mon Polly! I barely pushed you! Yer just a wuss!” Doug cackled as he pulled Polly out of the water and onto the rocks where she laid on her stomach spewing and coughing. Rufus pat her back, but it wasn’t to tease her. For a moment, he seemed genuinely concerned. She didn’t look at his face, but she felt it in the way he lightly pat her. He really didn’t hate her at all and he didn’t really want her to get hurt, he just acted like it so that Doug didn’t think he was a piss-washer.

 

“Git up, lil girl!” Doug demanded loudly and truculently. “I said git off yer ass!”

 

Polly slowly obeyed. Her body felt heavy and torn apart, but her lungs were still kicking and she was starting to get her breath back, so she stood up. Water dripped off of her nose and chin and her hair was now soaked. Though her braid was still intact, part of it was coming loose and her bangs sprawled across her face and poked at her eyelids. Her sunhat was lost in the water, probably travelling with the current. Her dress was now so soaked that it was almost see-through and one of her dress shoes had come undone, making it difficult to walk. Her arm ached, but she ignored it. She wanted to look tough. She may have been barely pushing through kindergarten, but she could look Doug in the eye and suddenly feel like she was pushing through the eighth grade.

 

“Y’know yer just a lil girl, right? So you do whatever I say. When I say go in the water, ya go in the water. If I say do a handstand, you do a handstand. I don’ care if yer daddy is watchin or no, yer gonna do it. I ain’t afraiduh Granma or yer daddy, ya hear, lil girl? Lil Polly? Ya wan’ me tuh push y’again?”

 

“No.”

 

Doug began to circle around her and while Rufus was still fixated on her with concern, he stood behind her and awaited for Doug’s signal to do something. Danny smirked and stood close enough to grab her if she tried to run for the trees.

 

“What did I ask yuh tuh do last time you saw me?” He said from behind her as he made his way around a rock so he could circle right back in front of her.

 

“You wanted me to climb a tree all the way to the top and back.” Her voice trembled and cracked beneath the pressure that she was currently being forced under. She knew that he was going to make her do it, but all that she was afraid of was what she saw in the water. She wanted to know what it would do to Doug if she threw him in, but she wasn’t strong enough to push him anyhow. She cursed herself for thinking such a horrible thing. It’s like her grandmother said, ‘If you push back, that’ll just make them angry, so if you wanna fight them, you have to do it using your mouth, not your fists.’

 

“And didyuh do it?” His tone gradually grew more and more challenging. His voice seemed to snap at her and then recoil like a snake’s tongue.

 

“No.” She quivered. The air sent a chill down her spine. She was wet and shivering and afraid. She wanted to go home.

 

“And what happens when yer a lil bitch and don’ do what Ah say?” He emphasized the ‘I’ so that his southern accent poked through a bit more. His dad worked on a farm and had spent some time down in Tennessee, so it was no wonder why Doug spoke with a somewhat southern accent. He really brought it out when he was angry, though. And he got angry a lot.

 

“I get strung up” she replied hesitantly. Rufus crept closer, his concern washing away as fast as she was drying, and Doug smiled sarcastically.

 

“Bingo, lil girl. Ah’m gonna fuckin pound you and if you tell yer daddy, Ah’ll send ya back into the river an’ Ah’ll let ya look fur yer stupid rocks while Ah hold yer head down in the water. Won’ letchuh come back up ‘till yuh find me a nice sharp one that Ah kin cut yuh wid, so don’ be a lil bitch now.” His face was so close to hers that he was bent down and she had no choice but to look him fiercely in the eyes. The tip of his nose wrinkled and the space between his eyebrows doubled over in little folds that creased away from his arched brows. His eyelids tucked beneath his brow bones and his lips pulled up like curtains into a weak sneer. He looked like a dog that had his prey set and ready to be mutilated. He jerked up and looked at Danny who was hesitating to grab her.

 

“Whatuh ya doin, fat boy? Grab ‘er!” Danny jumped at the sudden demand and practically leaped at her. His sweaty hands grabbed her by the arm and he looked at Rufus as a signal for him to grab the other. Rufus complied, but his grip on her didn’t firm until Doug motioned for them to follow him. So they pushed her through the rocks, their grips hardening as they drew closer to the tree line, away from her daddy and grandma, and Polly began to wonder if she was brave enough to climb the tree like she had thought of doing last time. Her arm ached badly and she was bleeding. The blood covered her fingers from holding her arm limply. It began to drip from her forearm now that she couldn’t put pressure on it and she knew that both Danny and Rufus knew that she wasn’t in any condition to be climbing trees, but they were too scared of Doug to let go.

 

They marched on into the trees and Doug began to search for the perfect tree for her to possibly die falling off of. Her daddy and grandmother were probably looking for them now and wondering where in God’s name they had run off to. She wished that her daddy would come and find her, but if he did then Doug would put her back in the river and beat her up, so she shook away the thought and decided to just climb the damn tree.

 

_How high could it be?_

 

On second thought, it was a hell of a lot higher than she could’ve imagined. When Doug picked out the tree he wanted, he pointed towards it and looked back at her with beady eyes that sank into her skull and made a place in the back of her mind.

 

“Climb it, lil girl.” Danny and Rufus suddenly lurched her forward with a violent shove and she found herself surrounded. Doug was shooting shotgun rounds at her with his stare and Rufus and Danny tried to mimic him, though Rufus had a hard time hitting her hard. It was as though he was a loaded barrel that kept clicking at every pull of the trigger. He just couldn’t seem to go off. She hesitated a moment, but didn’t want to test Doug’s patience, so she dragged herself towards the trunk of the tree and looked up at the spiraling branches ahead. It was probably the tallest tree she had ever seen and climbing it looked like a suicide mission.

 

_Come with me, Polly. We all float down here._

 

A shiver shot through her body. She was cold, no doubt, but there was a fire in her that wanted to burn down the whole damn tree. She reached for the first branch and felt the rough bark against the palm of her tiny hand. She tried to bring herself up, but there wasn’t a lot of strength in her arms, so she nearly came down again, but she pushed the toes of her feet against the hard wood of the trunk and lifted off in one push.  She pulled herself up and reached for the second branch which was a little easier to grip. She was too small for the lower branches, but she knew that once she had climbed passed them, the upper branches would be much easier, so she pulled herself up higher as she struggled along.

 

She could feel Doug’s eyes on her, watching her every breath. Knowing him, he was probably getting a boner just from watching her, feeling a tingle of pleasure every time she scraped her hand on the bark or nearly lost her footing. Every time she pulled herself up higher, she could feel his secret grin sinking farther back into his face. Soon enough, he was looking at her with a shadow around his eyes that taunted her and teeth that barely hid behind his tight lips. He was enjoying every second of her struggle, so she tried to make it look like it was a piece of cake, but it really wasn’t. She was wrong when she thought that the higher branches would be easier.

 

In fact, the tree seemed to wobble more and more the closer she got to the top. Some of the branches below her feet would snap when she pushed herself off of them and it came to the point where she tried to grab onto a weaker branch above her and ended up grabbing it too late. The branch beneath her gave way and she squeezed the branch above her for dear life. Her heart leaped into her throat and pounded in her ears as she looked down and for the first time, truly saw how high off of the ground she was. Doug was at the bottom of the trunk, looking up with pleasure, while Rufus and Danny were standing on either side of him, looking up with shock and interest.

 

She didn’t think that either of them thought that she would make it so far, but at that moment she felt like sticking her wet tongue out at them and nagging. She knew that it would piss Doug off though, so she turned her head back up and decided to take a leap of faith and try to grab the spine instead of one of the branches since the branches were now so thin that they slipped between her palms and snapped every time she tried to grab them. The ones beneath her were about to give way, so she had to think fast.

 

As she grabbed the spine, the bark chipping off a bit at her touch, something floated up towards her from beneath. She didn’t turn her head until it came into view beside her and only then did she catch a glimpse of something red like the blood on her hand which was now streaked across her fingers. It was followed by a thin white string that looked like loose floss. It stopped right in front of her face, shining in the sunlight that streaked through the leaves of the trees. It turned for a moment as though it were shifting its face towards her and then stopped and simply floated there, seemingly still. There was an eerie silence that followed and then a yell from Doug who was still watching intensely from below.

 

“Whatchuh doin, Shirley? Why yuh stoppin? Yuh scared er sum’in?” He teased. “Don’tchuh dare come down or Ah’ll cut yuh! I’ll cut yuh good, yuh heer? Ah’ll skin yuh lak uh pig and cut yer head clean off! Yuh heer me, lil girl?” Though Polly could hear his threats from up in that big tree, all she saw was the red balloon, round and shiny. She wanted to grab it, just to see if it would go up if she tugged it like she did once with the shades in their living room back at home, but she was too scared to let go.

 

_Just you and me._

 

And with a loud  _pop!_ the balloon came apart and suddenly, there was blood streaked all over her face. The balloon was gone. Even the string was nowhere to be seen and it was as though it just suddenly popped out of existence. She had flinched and lost her balance. She’d let go of the spine and let all of her weight ride on the branch beneath her. The branch quickly snapped and her body lurched down. Her left foot hit the stub as she fell down and her right shoulder came into contact with one of the branches below. She hit it with a gasp and her body ragdolled away from it. She screamed in terror and pain.

 

_I’m falling! I can’t stop! Oh, Gosh! Oh, gee! Oh, Lord almighty! I’m going down, Daddy! Please let them catch me! I don’t care if Doug cuts me! I don’t wanna fall down!_

 

Her body sank further and further and the closer she got to where Doug was standing, the bigger the branches got. The bigger the branches got, the harder she was hit until one of them hit her right in the middle of her spine and she felt a  _snap!_  that sent her whole body into shock before she she lost her ability to move or feel a thing. She let out one last shriek that rang through the trees like a ghost song. Not long after, a branch came right up from underneath her and whacked the back of her head. Her shriek was immediately cut short. The bark came off a bit and scraped against her scalp, leaving a trail of red scratches that cut deep beneath the roots of her hair. A few strands got caught in it and her body came down with a huge tug that made her look like a decoration being strung up from a hook on someone’s porch. Though her eyes were open, they looked like they belonged to the dead boy in the Kenduskeag; lifeless behind glass, only they were still full of green.

 

Their light, however, left in just a fraction of a second. It was sucked right out of her, every ray of it, and her body dangled from the branch that was collapsing beneath her weight yet somehow still holding up. Doug and his gang stood there for a long minute, trying to see whether or not she was just playing around, but when Rufus tried to climb up towards her, he began to see the blood and saliva streaming down from beneath her tongue and slicking over her lips. It created a thin thread that hung down lazily and dripped every other second. Some of it landed on Doug’s scrunched face. He wiped it away with disgust before examining it. The deep red and viscous liquid was streaked across his fingertips and some of it had been left right between his eye and the bridge of his nose.

 

He looked over at Danny who looked back at him with his lips parted into a still and pale ‘O.’ Their faces flushed away their color and became a ghastly greyish white. The fear in Doug’s eyes sparked and set aflame and Danny saw it. He felt it, but it was a cold flame that sent a shiver through his chest. Doug turned towards Rufus in a frantic and began to shout.

 

“Git down! Stop it! Git down! We gotta git outa heer! Her ol’ man’s gonna kill us! Don’ touch ‘er! We gotta go, now! Yuh heer me? NOW!” There were tears welling up in his eyes and he knew that he was in for some serious trouble, but there was no telling whether he was feeling scared or guilty. The thing was, he couldn’t help but to feel both. He felt like he murdered her. He just wanted to rile her up, get her to climb the tree and have a little fun -at least, that’s what he said in the police report- but Polly slipped and fell that day near the Kenduskeag and her daddy came running onto the scene with his breath so short and heavy that the police officers near thought he was going to have a heart attack before screaming at the sight of his dangling daughter who was as dead as dog meat up in that big tree with blood dripping down from her mouth.

 

Rufus died in June of 1986. He hung himself from that same tree using an old rope he found in his daddy’s garage. He was eight years old and he knew how to tie a noose. That’s what shocked the whole town. He was too young to know how to kill himself and yet he managed to do it so well that it was scary. No one saw the blood on Polly’s face. The medical examiners looked at her and did a whole autopsy, but there was no report of any blood other than the blood that came from the cut on her arm, the scrapes around her legs, back, and neck, and the deep bite wound on her tongue from when she hit her head so hard that her teeth clamped down and bit right into it.

 

Doug went into the looney house where he stayed until he was released a few months later and Danny moved away four months later to a town in Pennsylvania where he stayed with his uncle until he graduated high school. Whether or not Rufus died in relation to It was uncertain, but as the whole story unfolded before Ronnie in her restless sleep, she found herself tossing and groaning with a sick feeling in her stomach that it wasn’t going to end well for the rest of them either. Perhaps, whatever It was, It was waiting for the Losers club because unlike Polly, they didn’t flinch at the sudden pop of a red balloon…

 

...They ran towards it. And now three kids were dead and two were missing, though she didn’t have a doubt in her mind that the remaining two would show up eventually, mutilated and dead behind glassy eyes.

 

 _I want to float too._ The thought crossed her mind briefly and then returned with a quiet and tearful whisper that passed through her lips and hung in the air like clothes on a clothing line.

 

_Take me with you._

 

And then a voice whispered behind her, but in rhythm and beat that made it seem as though it were quietly whispering a poem.

 

“He th-thrusts his f-fists against the p-p-posts and still ins-sists he sees the guh-guh-guh-ghosts.”

 

It was as though the both of them, It and Ronnie alike, were both thinking of the Losers and somehow, she felt herself wince at the thought of them alongside the clown behind her that was trying to distract itself by tugging on a pair of plastic handcuffs.


	9. Paper Boats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dylan Purcell was the only one who could make Ronnie feel afraid which was something that no shape shifting demon could ever even dream of copycatting.

Ronnie watched through slanted and heavy eyelids as the creature pulled on the plastic chain, probably waiting for her to wake up. The thought of what might happen if it were to realize that she was awake made her stomach sink, so she tried to pretend like her eyes were still closed. She would close them gently and without being obvious and then reopen them just a bit, just enough to let some light through, and look at the clown to see what it was doing. It sat there impatiently tugging on the handcuffs, but exactly why it had handcuffs in the first place was what really concerned her. They were plastic too, making it seem childish that it was playing with them, but the thought of them being clasped around her own wrists was nauseating. 

 

And what exactly it would do with the power to keep her restrained, she didn’t want to know. She shifted to her side a bit, trying to make it seem as though she had simply tossed over in her sleep, but her head throbbed at the sudden movement and she winced at the searing pain behind her eyes. The pain was equivalent to the feeling of having someone stick their hand in her skull and pinch around. The light travelling in from the large grate above them hurt her eyes, so she turned towards the shadows where she felt more comfortable. She didn’t want to lift her head out of certainty that it would just make the pain worse. It felt like she was about to bleed from her eyes.

 

“He th-thrusts his f-fists against the p-p-posts and s-still ins-s-sists he s-sees the guh-guh-guh-SHIT!” It seemed to be imitating someone, but it threw the handcuffs onto the ground anyways in frustration. Though she couldn’t turn around and look at it, she knew it wore a tense expression as though it were deeply bothered by the fact that it couldn’t finish the sentence, or rather, it felt upset that it had been presented with a problematic obstacle. That obstacle was Ronnie -little Ronnie who used to think that all that mattered in this world was the Smiths and whether or not she was going to the spring fling with anyone. She used to read books from her mother’s collection that ranged from  _ Deadly Nightshade _ by Elizabeth Daly to  _ The Chill  _ by Ross Macdonald, which were mystery books. 

 

She’d always loved mystery. Though horror was a genre that suited her taste, she never liked the horrors outside of books or TV movie marathons. A week after Jason Mandel’s body was found, she was reading a book about a murder so gruesome that it inspired at least three different copycat killers that terrorized the town for over a decade. It started with one family that had their bodies cut and gutted from their belly buttons to their chins, but it soon sprouted into a mass of four different families that were mutilated in the same fashion. Only one of the killers was ever brought to justice, while the other two were never found. The last family to be killed was strung up using fishing wire and fish hooks that were brought out from the shack behind their house and one of them, a two year old girl, was strung up to her cot mobile and bled all over her crib which, for some odd reason, had been tipped over.

 

The baby’s blanket was thrown across the room alongside the baby mattress. It was as though the killer was furious and that anger stemmed from something that had to do with the child. Although it was a good mystery, the description of the crime scenes were sickening and made it difficult for her to sleep at night from time to time. She was sitting at her desk in a classroom of students at Derry High School, reading a brutal murder scene. It was English class and everyone had some time to take out their books and read. 

 

Dylan Purcell and his little gang were sitting in the back row with their feet kicked up on the tables. She could hear them spitting paper balls at one another and quietly cackling about things that could never reach her ears. Every now and then, the teacher would look up from her papers and ask them to keep their feet off of the desks. They would comply by swinging them down on the ground and pretending like they were keeping their legs out in the isle to lean further into their books that they were not even reading, but the moment she would shift her attention, they would swiftly swing them back over without haste and she would have to politely remind them again and again.

 

There was Johnny Bucks who sat in the front row near the windows, his nose stuck in a drawing that was hidden by a book as always. His pencil was always moving, sketching the lines of the world around him or, at least, what he imagined his world to be. She often wondered what those drawings were of since he never showed them to anyone. She wouldn’t have doubted it if some of them were sabotaging Dylan or Mrs. Turik. And then there was Lucy Raynott, Polly Raynott’s older sister, who always sat in the back but never spoke. Amy Churst was always poking her for wearing black clothes and teasing her hair so she looked like she was in a punk rock band. She usually ignored her remarks and turned towards the window in disinterest. She’d sometimes roll her eyes and cross her legs, making it harder to look at her and see anything but a rebellious teenage thrasher. Ronnie liked Lucy though she had only spoken to her a few times.

 

Just as she was about to turn the page, the old speaker in the corner of the room near the door squeaked and the DHS principal cleared his throat into the microphone. If all the students in the room were cats, their ears perked and their heads shot up with full attention. The only one who didn’t move or stop what they were doing was Johnny, or ‘Big Bucks’ as Dylan and his gang called him since he was a little overweight.

 

“Good morning, fellow students and staff.” His voice was hoarse which was unusual for principal Herring. Something was always wrong when his voice was like that. “As some of you have already heard, the Derry Police Department has issued a seven o’clock curfew. I must remind you that staying out after seven without the escort of an officer is a felony. Now I know that a lot of you like to go out at night with your friends, but until the curfew has been lifted, I would advise that all residents make plans before seven o’clock to ensure that the town remains safe and secure. Last night however, there was a break-in here at the school.”

 

A low murmur erupted throughout the classroom. Of course, the only person other than Ronnie who wasn’t leaning towards their neighbor was Johnny. Nothing ever seemed to bother Johnny except for sometimes when Dylan would poke at his belly and call him ‘Hammy.’ Lucy scoffed from the back of the room, but no one noticed except Ronnie because they were too busy snorting in laughter or softly muttering things to nearby ears.

 

“The suspect is believed to be a student.” The murmur grew and people began to shush one another. “Although I know that most of you are a little emotionally overwhelmed after recent events,” the murmur had completely died, “please remember that the school is doing everything we can to try to keep our students safe, therefore if anyone has any information on who the culprit may be, please inform either myself or the front office. We would like to ensure students that there is no reason to feel anxious. Police officers will be present at all times to ensure the town’s security.”

 

There was a thoughtful pause before the principal cleared his throat and his voice cried through the speaker again.

 

“On a more positive note, many of you have been concerned about whether or not the Winter Ball is still on due to the curfew, but it has instead been rescheduled for three o’clock on Saturday. Dinner will not be served, but there will be snacks and refreshments.” The murmurs picked up into excited remarks and exclamations. “We encourage students to attend and we wish everyone happy holidays. Thank you.” The intercom squeaked once more before going completely silent. Students around the room began cackling excitedly with their friends, especially Amy and her clique. Though Amy was admired by most of the girls in school, there were some, like Ronnie and a few other girls that weren’t the most sociable of people, who found themselves wishing that they didn’t exist every now and then.

 

It was a bit of a strange thought for Ronnie since she had never disliked someone despite never knowing them.

 

“Hey, Ronnie!” A voice called from the back of the room. Ronnie snapped her head in the direction of the voice and saw Dylan sitting with his feet up as always, smirking in her direction. There was always a smug look on his face as though he was always so sure of everything. She knew Dylan and she hated him the most out of everyone in the world, but he wouldn’t accept that. He didn’t care if some of the younger kids hated him, but the fact that Ronnie imagined his guts on the outside of his body really riled him up. He just wouldn’t let it go. “Wanna go to Winter Ball with me?” He winked and chewed down on his gum, probably imagining all of the unholy things that happen in all of those high school dramas he’s ever watched.

 

_ Pathetic asshole. _

 

The other boys laughed and looked at her with slanted eyes. She couldn’t help but to snap back. She didn’t mind humiliation, but if she didn’t defend her position, then someone was going to take it for her.

 

“No.” The room went silent. Dylan’s smirk didn’t drop until she had turned her body back to her book and proceeded to flip the page. Though it was difficult to read the next few lines without her mind wandering back to what she had just done, she pushed through the next few pages and found herself indulging in the story once more. Though it wasn’t exactly the best time to be reading a book about mass murder, she couldn’t help but to flip the pages even as she was walking down the hallway with her bag slung over her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was on her way to her locker to retrieve her winter gear. 

 

There was a dark murmur amongst the happy excitement that morning that droned through her ears as she passed hundreds of familiar and unfamiliar faces. In this instance she knew that it was because above all of the people in this very hallway which was crammed to the fullest, she couldn’t find a single face that she could smile towards and say, “Ah! You again!” And while she couldn’t find it, as she glanced around, almost every other person could. Their laughter grew farther away until it sunk into the back of her mind, beyond the reach of her ears, and went silent. Footsteps became distant knockings and the sound of her own intensified against the clammer. Soon enough, her own footsteps were all that she could hear above the voice in her head that was reading the lines in her book.

 

She was no longer in reality but inside the pages where she could almost taste the richness of blood as though she were the murderer, licking and sucking his fingers clean as though he had just enjoyed some delicious ribs. She wouldn’t find out until later in the book that he really did. When the victims were gutted from stomach to chin, he would take out their innards and eat them. For a while, the investigators believed that he would sell them, but they were in for a darker shade of murder. She passed by Bruce Khroh, who was the head of the football team, and who used to talk to her in middle school but soon began the usual silent treatment that she would receive from quite a few other people she used to know. 

 

_ Everyone started ignoring me when I got to high school. It’s kind of funny. As a kid, I always thought that friends were forever, but I really was a little stupid. Then again, I supposed everyone was. _

 

She turned and walked down another hallway, surprised that she hadn’t run into anyone considering that she wasn’t exactly looking where she was going or even thinking about where her feet were taking her. She let autopilot take over for a moment while she was hitting the climax of the book. The world around her was washed away like paint, not mattering and growing bland, and the words on her page were a deep tint of rose. It seduced her into its heart, opening her to a world where the most delicious fruit could become tasteless and the most beautiful of flowers could become a brown and wilted stem pushing through a dry patch of soil in the eyes of any onlooker. 

 

In reality, flowers could be beautiful yet quickly turn into a killer. All it took was a steady hand to pick it and consume it. Both die together. There’s always a tragedy behind the beautiful and in this case, Ronnie couldn’t tell whether she was the one being consumed or the one doing the killing. Either way, death would come pushing through dry soil eventually. At this point, thinking back on this day down in the sewers where the small light shining from the grate blended with the curves of her body and the shadows masked the rest, she didn’t care how long it took for that flower to grow. She wanted it now. Now was best. Now was the perfect time. Yet as she waited, it didn’t seem to want to push up any further, so she stopped trying to encourage it and opened her eyes to look at the dark.

 

“What the fuck’re you doing on the ground, little girl?” Dylan asked teasingly. Ronnie was on the ground outside in the back of the school with her book ripped from her and in the hands of one of Dylan’s minions, James Stowe. She had fallen after Dylan pushed her and the sight of her wanting to get up but being unable to move probably got his cruelty boner going. She had had a few encounters with Dylan that felt similar, but she had become more and more afraid of him. That was another thing that she could never understand about Dylan; why he made her feel afraid. Nothing else did, so why did Dylan?

 

“Is it ‘cause you’re too afraid, huh? ‘Cause you’re a little bitch, HUH?” Her chest quivered and her breath shook inside of her lungs. Nerves were firing throughout her entire body like guns blazing in a gunfight. She couldn’t seem to control them and it made her tear up. She had never been so afraid. She had never felt so much trepidation that it drove her to tears. It just wasn’t normal. It’s not something that people get every day and yet the thought of Dylan passed through her mind every day and it would make her throat swallow dry air. “Get up!” He screamed in her face which made her flinch. 

 

She obeyed and stood up, but his face was uncomfortably close. He watched her do so and looked at her with the eyes of someone who was thinking of doing terrible things; surely, she thought, to her. She swallowed hard and tried not to looking directly into his eyes, but she couldn’t help it. She saw the fire in his soul and it was blazing violently. It licked the insides of her mind and set it aflame, yet her walls were weak. She was cardboard and he was metal. He was stone and she was dirt. She burned in his fire and if they could build a house, he would crush her and tower high while she remained in the dark, compressed and turning cold.

 

Trying to mix them together could never end well. Yet here it happened and she couldn’t help but to feel herself compressing and falling apart.

 

“You’re gonna come to the Winter Ball with me, aren’t ya Ronnie? You’re not gonna ditch me, are ya?” Dylan’s face was turning red as though he was heating up like a tea kettle. His ears were pink and his pupils were two black funnels that dug deep into his head. Ronnie didn’t say a word and kept her eyes ahead of her. She stared at his built chest thinking that it would be better than looking directly in his eyes and she was right. There was nothing more terrifying to her than those eyes. It was the eyes that made the world seem like it was on fire. He began nearly screaming. “ARE YA?” She shuttered. His voice was on fire too. He was raising hell itself. Hell was coming and she was too afraid to stop it.  

 

James and Dylan’s other minion, Hunter Reagan, began tried to mimic his stare, but they couldn’t quite get it right. 

 

“Answer me, bitch! Are you sure you’re not going with me? Are you really?” He stepped closer so now his breath was hot against her face. She stepped back at the sudden tension and tried to look him in the eyes, but couldn’t bring herself to gaze up. All of a sudden, he moved his arm behind her head and grasped her ponytail before pulling it down. She felt the painful tug and was forced to crane her neck to look up at him, her scalp on fire. “Answer me.” His tone was threatening now. There was no escaping anymore. She had to say something, anything.

 

“I’ll go with you” she choked. She didn’t want to say it, but if it meant that it would stop him from hurting her, then it was worth it. She just didn’t want to actually do it. That was the thing; she would’ve rather hurt herself than go anywhere with Dylan. His face loosened a bit, but he seemed to still look a little too cocky. The deadly look in his eyes remained; the kind that made you want to shrivel up and disappear under their weight. Their depth was infinite like two black wormholes drilling into her skull, but she risked a glance. That was when she felt a hand graze her arm. It was subtle but it made the hairs on her body come to a stand. She shot a brisk glance over her shoulder to see whose hand it was, but just by his tone and shift in stance, she could tell that it was Dylan’s.

 

The other two watched with interest, their gazes not exactly matching his but sparked with a dark curiosity that only someone truly messed up could have. James was pretty messed up, but Ronnie wouldn’t learn this until much later. Apparently, his dad had some serious issues and she wouldn’t have doubted it if it was hereditary, but that still didn’t excuse the way he let James treated her. As for Hunter, he seemed to be a little more like a normal kid. Although he did enjoy some of the moments spent bothering defenseless kids, he knew when he was crossing the line. He watched however with the content of someone who was gradually transitioning into a sociopath.

 

_ Look what he’s twisting you into. _

 

“Yeah, you wouldn’t ever do that to me, would you?” He nearly whispered as his grip on her hair firmed, but he was no longer tugging down which allowed her some relief. He was looking directly into her eyes now with a longing that made her legs tremble. In that moment, she was afraid he might snap and go straight for a kiss or even worse, raping her, but he instead bent forward and his lips hovered beside her ear, every breath a gush of hot air that felt sticky against her skin. “Would you, Ronnie?”

 

She shook her head. She didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t speak. The words were buried in the back of her throat where they could never be retrieved. She wasn’t even sure if they ever tried to reach her tongue, but that’s not what really worried her. His hand loosened and eventually released her hair from its clamp before running through the strands and snaking its way back around to her face. His hand squeezed her cheeks and cupped her jaw so that she felt like she was being threatened, but it was more gentle, in a skin-crawling way, and she felt the need to shy away but she couldn’t. She was trapped in her body, too afraid to move. Dylan took in a long and deep breath before his other hand slipped up the rim of her shirt and caressed her stomach.

 

She cringed at the contact and tried not to let out the whimper that was deep within her throat, but part of it came out and he had taken it the wrong way. She didn’t want this and she knew that allowing him to control her was wrong, but she couldn’t seem to let herself become angry. Instead she was scared to death. She was scared so bad that she couldn’t move a muscle and it was as though she was completely paralyzed. She felt his cold and clammy touch against her skin, leaving a trail against her stomach as it paved its way up towards her ribs. This wasn’t right. This didn’t feel good. She couldn’t take it like this anymore. She didn’t want him touching any part of her at all and she could feel a lump forming in her throat that had been there all along but had gone unnoticed until that very moment. 

 

The moment he had gotten close to her breast, she panicked and slapped his hand away before recoiling away with her arms protecting her breast as though it were the greatest of treasures. She could feel the tears in her throat, clenching painfully, but she didn’t want him to see her so vulnerable. Dylan’s face completely altered and it seemed as though his anger had returned. His face scrunched and he snapped at her with a terrifying shrill in his voice.

 

“You stupid bitch!” He took a few heavy steps forward which drenched Ronnie in panic and dread. It was as though a bucket of water was just dropped on her and all she could do was stand there all cold and soaked and with her bra showing through her shirt and everything. She could just stand there in dread and embarrassment and fear.

 

Just terrible fear.

 

“You just asked for it, slut!” He threatened harshly. His voice sharpened into a flatline and he seemed awfully serious. James and Hunter suddenly snatched her arms with hard and bruising grips and Dylan stepped even closer. They were back to being face-to-face and all that Ronnie could do was shove and kick and scream for someone, anyone, to help her, but there was no one in the back of the school until another half hour or so when the sports program would come jogging out for the big game on Friday. She gritted her teeth and tried not to cry. The panic had really begun to rise within her and she knew that no one would hear her desperate plea. She could feel James’s smirk being directed towards her again. 

 

Dylan punched her once and hard. He had only done it to quiet her down, but it was the first of quite a few. It was enough to make her nose bleed and her head spin on its axis. Once she was too dazed to say a word, he brought out his dad’s knife from his back pocket and grabbed a handful of her shirt before making a straight cut right through the fabric. At first she was too dazed to see what was happening, but she quickly realized when it was already too late. He tugged at the fabric until it tore away and revealed her stomach, bare and pale against the afternoon sunlight. She whimpered, but only a little bit beneath her breath, trying not to think of the worst.

 

He tore away the remaining fabric and tossed it aside. Her chest was showing and she felt terribly exposed. She couldn’t move her arms to cover herself up, so she tried to tug herself free, but James’s grip hardened alongside Hunter’s. Both seemed to be smiling beyond amusement. The proceedings were a bit of a blur. It was as though her memories were a VHS tape and this very hurtful memory was tampered with so some scenes were completely cut out while others were vivid. She remembered it all but only from one of her senses. She could remember the way his hands felt, the cold sting of the blade that cut her stomach and left that scar that she couldn’t look at without wishing she hadn’t, and the way that his breath smelled as his face came close to hers. 

 

It made her want to vomit every time she thought about it. He was on the verge of taking her that day, but she got away. She was almost topless and bleeding from beneath the cloth that she had pressed against her wound, but she sprinted towards the canal. If she wanted to run towards the road, she would’ve had to go around the school and around the front. Fuck that. She needed a way out now. The water wasn’t as cold as she thought it would be and it felt pretty shallow. She pushed through the weak current and got to the other side with Dylan and his minions chasing after her. Though they never caught up with her and she was able to run home without running into them again, Dylan still kept the part of her shirt that he tore off as his own twisted definition of a trophy. 

 

He would corner her from time to time after that, trying to get a feel at her, but he never got nearly as far as he did that day and as Ronnie stared into the darkness, she felt like she was going to cry again. For the first time since she had arrived in these sewers, she realized that it may have been safer for her down there than where Dylan Purcell could find her. For the first time, she found comfort in knowing that she wouldn’t have to worry too much about feeling those hands on her body again. If she died down here, then Dylan Purcell would probably have moved on to some other girl and done the same thing, but at least she would have escaped his sexual tendencies. It only added to the list of reasons why she couldn’t go back no matter how much she desperately wanted to.

 

After a while of simply staring into the abyss that was now a part of her, she decided to finally let it know of her awakening and sat up cautiously. Her head whirred disconcertingly and she squeezed her eyes shut before reopening them towards the reality around her. She was no longer in a void. She was in what was quite possibly about to become her burial site, or perhaps her new home for the time being. As she sat up, she looked up towards the mass of spiraling bodies that were the missing kids. She knew that even if some of them didn’t look like it, they were all dead. There was no doubt. Most of them had probably been there for decades or even more than a hundred years. Some of them looked like they could have been kids from the easter explosion while others looked like they were just unlucky.

 

The last time IT had awoken, it wasn’t the same as every other. Instead of creating this huge disaster that would kill a lot of kids or even just people in general, from what she had seen when looking at the missing persons reports, it had stopped in August, months before it usually did. What exactly caused this sudden cessation in the cases in missing kids that year, she didn’t know and probably never would, but she wanted to. She had to know just so she could figure out if there was a way to stop other kids like Jane from being killed, but at the same time she didn’t really care anymore. Even if she found it, IT would come back eventually just like it did a few months ago when Jason died. She didn’t feel like caring about anything anymore. Haley and her mother were better off without her, Jane was dead, and Ronnie couldn’t tell whether or not she was even human. She had to admit, she wasn’t okay at all. She couldn’t go back -that was even worse. Now that everything had changed, there was no way to turn back the hands of the clock and go back to when she would just listen to Haley play from her bedroom while she read her books.

 

She couldn’t go back to when everything mattered so much. The clown perked at her movement, but didn’t put on much of a mask to hide his frustration with the whole ordeal. 

 

_ Who do you think is having a harder time, you or me, asshole! _

 

His glare was cold, but there was a faint glimmer in his eyes that reflected his liveliness.

 

ITS _ , Ronnie. Not  _ his!

 

She wanted to scream at it, but instead visibly sank at its glare.

 

_ It’s not like we’re in different boats. _

 

Its face was curved like a moon into a loose frown that made it seem as though it were hiding a sound behind its lips that reverberated so much power it could break every bone in her body. 

 

_ Paper boats. White doves floating on water. Jane’s flowers. Floating. What makes a paper boat float? _

 

Her mind felt like it was coughing up words. Whether or not they had meaning or if they were just utter crap was unclear. She felt as though the turtle was making her think things that she didn’t mean to. Maybe it was. Who knew…

 

_ Gulf wax. Brush some on and you’re good to go. Good to sail. She’s all ready, Captain! Ahoy! Don’t lose your boat, Captain, or else Bill’s gonna kill ya! And remember, it’s always  _ she _ , not  _ it.

  
  


She,  _ not  _ it.

 

Who was Bill?

 

Something clasped around her right wrist and she recoiled her hand to try and release it, but she was quick to realize that it was one of the plastic handcuffs. She frowned and dared a challenging stare at the clown, eager to know what it had set up for her. Whatever trick it had up its sleeve, she wanted to see it. It had the same murderous darts in its eyes, pointed and placed just in the right spot so that she could feel an overwhelming power resonate from them, but she wasn’t deceived. It was doing this because it had no idea what to do and she didn’t either.

 

_ We’re in the same damn paper boat. _

 

It was her turn to float.

 


	10. Beating and Breaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tables turn and Ronnie suddenly finds herself trapped in complete darkness for days. The mind is broken when the heart goes hungry...

The clown frowned back, but his seemed more comical than her own. Every facial expression a clown makes always somehow seems more comical. His painted nose and arched red maniacal smile made it seem as though he had jumped straight out of a comic book, but Ronnie wasn’t exactly big on comics. She preferred to stick to her mystery novels. Even then, the glint in his eyes seemed to indicate legitimacy. This was real and not a dream. This wasn’t a tragic and terrifying nightmare that she could awaken from with a bit of sweat and then gulp down a glass of cold water to make everything alright again. Reality isn’t exactly something that anyone, even Ronnie, could escape.

 

_Who was Bill?_

 

She didn’t spare a moment to examine the clown’s face much more. She had to know what its plans were and how exactly she was going to beat the turtle.

 

After all, it wasn’t going to leave her head and she didn’t want to have lived her whole life just to die in this way. There had to be more. For Ronnie, this couldn’t be the end, but perhaps somewhere deep inside she had a gut feeling that couldn’t quite let go and that feeling was what made her think that maybe this was the end of the story. Maybe stories didn’t have to end the way that they did in books and movies. Life wasn’t a Friday movie night or a display of fireworks, it was unpredictable and ruthless. There was no fixed ending and the narrator has no control over the things that happen next.

 

Only the writer of the story can arrange a fixed ending and she had thought her entire life that the writer was herself. In the end, as she had now known, it wasn’t her at all. She had been given a false sense of independence and now she was handcuffed to a shapeshifting lunatic that for some reason wouldn’t kill her even though it could.

 

It _could._

 

The clown stood up from his sitting position and yanked on the chain, signalling for her to stand up as well. She groaned at the thought of so much as moving her legs, but she had to be honest, there really wasn’t much else for her to do. It was either this or stare back off into the abyss which would’ve probably driven her insane, so she decided to stick to the alternative. Her weak legs could barely hold her weight, so she subconsciously grabbed for anything nearby to help stabilize her. She quickly realized that when she had meant to grab an old fashioned toy baby stroller that had been jammed into the pile so that it was practically impossible to move, she instead accidentally reached for the clown’s knee which made her jump and pull back.

 

Well, that was one way to get her to her feet. Her face flooded red in embarrassment and she thought that it was going to smash her face in with its foot, but it instead gave her a disgusted glare and tugged her away towards the stage beneath the spiral of children that was barely even recognizable as a stage anymore due to the overflowing junk around it. The tinge in the air remained, foul and unmoving. The faraway echoes of children’s laughter seemed to carry about the place, reverberating off of cement walls and travelling upward through the grate and into the sky. She could smell the rotting from their bodies, preserved in a moment in time but only in their minds. The rest of them were long dead. The objects surrounding the stage were mostly toys and miscellaneous items, though some seemed like they were missing some pieces which made them almost unidentifiable. Some of them themselves were tiny pieces that Ronnie couldn’t exactly point out, but she knew that they were there because in between whole items there would be rusted gaps of different fading colors.

 

It was hard to tell what they were or what they were supposed to be. The stage itself was the main attraction, however. It was dirt stained and the paint had faded. It seemed old fashioned and reused, but it was definitely his.

 

ITs _, Ronnie, not_ his!

 

But she couldn’t help it. Looking at the way he -IT was pulling her towards this unpleasant scene, it seemed as though It had emotions -real emotions that It fumbled around with in its head, trying to make sense of them the way Ronnie always did when she was alone with her thoughts. Her thoughts, almost in the way that perhaps Its thoughts were at this very moment, could be quite frustrating sometimes. Sometimes new thoughts would pop into her mind that she had never thought before that completely changed everything and she would feel frustrated that now she had to figure everything out. Maybe this was how It figured it would handle things. She had no idea what it was actually about to do though, which didn’t exactly frighten her but it did make her worry a bit about what was going to happen to her now.

 

Was It going to do a little dance for her too just like it did to that girl -what was her name? Was it Beverly? Yes, that’s what it was. Such a pretty name- or did it actually have a plan? She wasn’t growing impatient, just a little agitated. She walked through the muck and entered the shadow of the floating children. There was no telling how many of them there were and she wasn’t planning on trying to count them. Although she had looked at them before, she hadn’t realized how truly sad the atmosphere really was. It was dim despite the shining light and those tiny silhouettes, moving steadily and quietly, suspended in the tinged air with their faces to the sun which fell on them and shined down but never truly reached the bottom of the spiral where the stage stood, leaving some in the dark, were beautiful yet dispiriting to watch. There was no telling how long they had been forgotten there for. It was as though it was a dump for missing children that were never found and were soon forgotten in the fading edges of the picture frame of time.

 

She could see some of their faces, eyes open and jaws slack, but they seemed to be crying behind their grey eyes. Some of them seemed as though they were simply staring into the sun, waiting for it to burn them, but knowing that it may never happen. They were waiting for time to catch up and allow them their well earned rest, but it didn’t seem to want to come. Even time was afraid of It. If she had had enough time to stand and stare, then she probably would have shed a tear, but she was instead tugged towards the stage and her stare turned towards the dropping wooden platform that squeaked and _plonked_ in front of her. The muck was too wet and sticky to move from its collision with the ground.

 

It was loud and heavy and opened like a mouth getting ready to stretch out its tongue. In the very back of it was a cloudy red backdrop that seemed as though it was painted in the depths of hell itself. There was no creepy carnival music like the last time or big smoke blasts that would pop and fizzle like rockets, but there was a clown only he was dragging her with a pair of toy handcuffs instead of dancing. He tugged her onto the stage despite the fact that she had stopped for a moment to take in the view of the spiral and when she was standing on the rotting wood, waiting for what would happen next, he put the other handcuff around her opposite wrist and turned away. She glanced at him in confusion, her eyebrows forming creases around her forehead, but the real feeling that was washing over her was the realization that it was walking away.

 

It really did have a plan. She stood frozen, her eyes still slightly raw from sleep but glued open and caught like a fishing hook on the clown as it walked a straight line towards the front of the stage and jumped off. It landed just a few feet away unlike in her dream where he had jumped quite far.

 

IT, _Ronnie. Don’t be stupid. You’ll be okay. You’re alone and trapped and everything’s fucked, but you’ll be okay._

 

There was a loud sort of moan from beneath the stage as the clown lifted it and began sending it back into its original position which was pressed up against the sides of the back of the stage. There was an area of the stage in the way back that was left for props and curtains and as long as the actors stood behind the curtain’s path, then they wouldn’t get hit by the stage if it suddenly were to prop up, but Ronnie wasn’t standing behind the curtain line. She was right in front of it and before she could move back, she found herself plummeting backwards onto the floor and hitting her forearm on the dirty wood. She damn near broke her neck and her legs were popped into the air where they flew lazily and fell to the side.

 

The shock and adrenaline pushed through her like an air pump breathing air into a balloon fast and the stage turned dark, leaving her blind and confused. It felt like she had blinked and suddenly ended up lying down on her back with her neck straining to look around despite the fact that the darkness was so thick that not a single thing could be seen. Her breaths were heavy in her chest and once the shock had washed over and she was able to move, she pushed herself onto her feet and threw her body against the stage. Though she knew that the stage was unbearably heavy and that It had probably used quite a gust of Its abnormal strength to trap her there, she had the notion that she could somehow do the same.

 

 _I made you the same way,_ the turtle began in a whisper, _so don’t hesitate, just push it! Push it down! Don’t become inferior to it! Do it! NOW!_

 

“Stop! Just get out of my head! GET OUT!” she screamed before kicking the stage with a loud grunt and feeling the ache in her hands. Though they were handcuffed and splintering against the wood with every punch, she pounded them against the closed platform and screamed in anger and desperation. She knew that It could hear her. She knew that it didn’t care how hard she pounded or how loud she screamed. As long as she remained in her enclosure, she couldn’t so much as touch It, but she had the turtle. He was in her head, telling her what to do and what not to do, yet she was screaming for him to leave. It was a war between two beings that were intertwined and It somehow got caught in the gunfire.

 

Or perhaps, as it seemed all along, It was the ammunition firing and ricocheting from one side to the other. It just knew that both sides could catch them with their teeth and chew through It, so It considered an escape from this dilemma. The only issue there was that it had everything to do with It and that thing pounding and screaming inside of her enclosure was, though somewhat doubtedly, stronger. She was a creature too, concocted only by a powerful celestial being that disguised himself as a slow-paced peacemaker, but there really was no judgement in that at this point. Blood oozed in bubbles from her knuckles that were scraped and skinned.

 

She bruised her legs from kicking and her burst of violent energy was beginning to disintegrate into a pile at her feet. She wanted to strangle the entire universe and cry without end.

  
  


_I don’t want this. I never asked for this. I never asked to be your little fucking experiment. I just want to go home. I just want to see Haley. I just wanted to know whether or not Jane was alive. Can’t you give me some time to mourn or is that too much to ask for?_

 

She had hoped that the Turtle was in her head long enough to have heard those thoughts and considered them. There were tears running down her face and cascading down her neck. She could feel the warm liquid cooling against her skin as her eyes burned with rage and devastation.

 

 _I’ve lost everything. Though they aren’t dead, thank_ fuck, _I’ve lost Haley and mom and Barbara. Jane is somewhere in that horrible mix of bodies and that clown that’s out there trying to figure out how to get rid of me has me trapped on this prison. I can’t even see. Oh, God. How do I get out? What does it have planned? What the_ hell _is even happening anymore?_

 

 _You want me to kill myself and risk the life of everyone I know and for what? Screw you! Screw you and your ‘I made you, therefore you have to do whatever I say’ bullshit!_ We _are the victims of_ your _stupidity!_

 

“Rrrraaahh! Shut up you stupid bitch!” her voice screeched and she felt her body jerk. It was as though some kind of outer force had aggressively plunged into her and forced her backwards onto the floor. She fell on her arm again and yelped at feeling of skin slapping against hard floor. Her long hair was pinned beneath her elbow and as she tried to pulled herself up again, she felt the tug against her scalp. She felt her face getting hot and her eyes were laminated with incandescent tears. Her teeth were clenched between frantic breaths as she struggled to stand up right again. She stood up too quick and was overcome with a dizzy spell, but it quickly subsided.

 

“No.” She glared into the darkness and awaited another strike. It never came. The single word that she had uttered so bluntly remained strung in the air by a loose thread that mocked the silence.

 

_No._

  
  
  
  
  


Haley looked at her mother with tears in her eyes.

 

“I want Ronnie and I wan’er now!” she whined loudly. There were warm streams trickling down her face and she was wailing uncontrollably. Her sister had been missing for two days and by now her mother was frantically calling everyone in the damn Derry community for assistance in the search. Her father had called his brother who lived only a few miles from Derry and he claimed that he hadn’t seen her since Christmas. He hung up the phone with a heavy sigh and rubbed his face with his hands to ward off the stress, but it only came harder with each minute that she was gone.

 

Her mother knelt down to comfort her, but Haley continued to wail and simply stood. She accepted the tender embrace her mother offered, but the only embrace she wished for was her sister’s. Jane had been missing for a while now and she worried that perhaps she would never meet her again, but her sister was another story. Her sister was her best friend, the jelly to her peanut butter, the fire in her soul, and without it she was completely burnt out and bland. She felt as though she was losing her entire life and she cried and begged for her mother to bring Ronnie to her.

 

Her mother just held her and stroked her hair and kissed her head. She rubbed her back and squeezed her in her arms until Haley had her ear against her breasts. She listened to her heart beating and breaking, beating and breaking, and she wailed in rhythm with its soft thumps. She hiccuped through her last cries that night after crying for nearly an hour. Her mother had carried her to her bedroom and tucked her into bed. She slid into the bed next to her and enveloped the both of them in the blanket that Ronnie had given her when it became too small for her. Her mother remembered that blanket well. She never parted with it when she was a little girl, but now that she was grown up, it would go passed her ankles when she tried to pull it over her torso.

 

It was Haley’s now and Haley pressed her face into her mother’s chest as she whimpered softly into sleep. As her cries died, her mother died a little too. She felt herself begin to cry as well. She cried once Haley fell asleep, the terrible guilt and worry of a mother mixing with the tears that soaked into the bedsheets. She only cried for a little while and tried not to make too much noise so Haley could sleep soundly without hearing her mother cry. She couldn’t cry in front of Haley. She didn’t want her to know that her mommy feels as though it’s her fault that her daughter is gone. She didn’t want her to see the pain of it all. She thought that maybe she should’ve tried harder to be a better mother. Maybe she should’ve looked after her more and given her some of the things she wanted as a child. Maybe she hadn’t done enough to keep Ronnie happy. Maybe she was a terrible mother.

 

If Ronnie was dead, which she dreaded the thought of, then she would’ve murdered her child and that was something that a mother could never live with. Her tears drained into her sleep and as they both slept beneath that stupid little blanket, her father sat in the kitchen with his head in his hands and the phone still on its hook.

 

_Please don’t take her. Please. She’s my baby. My little baby…_

 

Haley clung the blanket closer in her tiny hands and listened to her mother’s heart beating and breaking, beating and breaking…

  
  
  
  
  


Ronnie remained trapped for two days. It had been four days since she went missing and she could swear that she could hear ghosts moaning phrases that were once clear, but soon grew muffled as though they were whispering under water. She was laying on the hard wood with her handcuffs broken. She had managed to break the chain, but there was no way out of that horrible cage. It was still pitch dark and she wasn’t sure whether it was day or night. It was a miracle that she was still alive considering how severely dehydrated she had become.

 

Her mouth was as dry as dust and she could feel the crust on her lips forming from all of the dry and dead skin. Her eyes felt dry too, but she had been passed out for quite a while. She woke up just momentarily, just enough to hear the voices grow quieter, and she opened her eyes just a crack to see if she was still there. She couldn’t remember where she was or who she was, but it seemed to very gradually come back as she peeked around helplessly. She couldn’t move her body and her heart was beating loudly in her ears. She was laying on her side with her arm out and her legs stretched behind her. Her head had toppled to the side and it felt as though all the blood in her body was in her brain. She wanted to reach for something and just slit her wrists. Maybe if she drank the blood, it would help to quench her thirst, but she would die with the blood still on her tongue.

 

The thought was somehow appealing and made her lick the back of her teeth with her tongue in an attempt to remove the dryness, but it only scraped alongside the bone walls and seemed even more deprived of moisture. She felt her eyelids growing heavy again and the voices came in a roar.

 

_Look here, pretty girl! Look! You wanna go to the Spring Fling with me? How about you come down with me to the quarry and go for a swim! I bet you’d look nice in a two piece! I bet you would. Real nice._

 

_Remember to come home before seven! Don’t follow people you don’t know!_

 

_Jane is in the water. Drink it. Drink the water. Who cares if it’s a little murky? Who cares if you get sick? You’re worthless, anyway! You’re dying, so might as well die faster! Die, stupid bitch. You’re so stupid. Drink the fucking water._

 

_Still I will be merry,_

_very merry,_

_hee, ho,_

_hee, ho,_

_hee, ho,_

_hee, ho._

 

_A penny for the clown will flip that awful frown! Just a penny, no more! Balloons come in all colors, from red to blue, all sizes, all shapes! Step right up, Ronnie! Step right up!_

 

A deep growl erupted from Ronnie’s stomach and she clenched it weakly.

 

_Meat. Can you feel it? It’s the hunger. Meat. You should just cut your wrists and bleed. Blood. You should drink the blood. Blood. Drink. Water. Food. Hungry. So hungry. So fucking hungry. Fuck. Stop swearing or you’ll have to wash that bad mouth of yours, little girl. Stop. Little girl. Stop that swearing. No. Trash mouth. Yeah, sure! Trash the trash mouth! Worthless. Dying. Die faster. Thirsty. It’s so dry. It’s so dark. Need food. Need water. There isn’t any, so what is there to drink? What is there to eat? Eat. Eat. Fuck. Stop that awful swearing. Would you use that language with your mother, little girl? Would you talk like that if your momma was here? No. Mom. No. Haley. Hungry. Haley. Hungry._

 

She opened her eyes again, the voices screaming in a rumble of ghastly cries, and her golden eyes shimmered against the lack of light. They glowed on their own and she felt her fingers glide against the hard wood. Her arm reached towards nothing in hopes of finding something.

 

_Boom. Boom. Hearts. Their heart is beating just over there. I just have to reach out and grab it. I just need that wonderful heart. I need that blood on my tongue._

 

_Drink the blood, you idiot._

 

_I need that pulsing muscle on my tongue. I need it so much. I need it. Beating and breaking, beating and breaking, beating..._


	11. The Creature in the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the verge of death, Ronnie struggles to stay awake until someone enters the room with her, only she's not interested in the mysterious figure, but rather what they're holding in their hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a warning, there is gore. Also, the romance is finally starting to kick in but just a little bit. Don't get too excited yet (:

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, little Miss?” her mother said with her brows creased. She had her hands by her side. She only ever had her hands by her side when she was ready to point a finger at someone. Barbara knew that it was going to be her. Whether or not she liked it, everything had to be her fault. It was her fault that her hair was always a brown bird’s nest, that her legs were big and meaty, that her glasses were so big, and that her dad decided to marry off another woman. It was always her fault.

 

“I’m going out to see Mister and Misses Boslan. Ronnie’s been missing for days and I wanna help them.” She was putting on her boots and one of them was fitting tight and giving her a hard time. She was going to have to buy new ones soon.

 

“Do you understand what the term ‘grounded’ even means? It means you’re not leaving this house except for school and nothing else. Have I made myself unclear? Do you want me to clarify a little more?”

 

“Ronnie needs me, mom.” Barbara stopped for just a short moment to look into her mother’s eyes. Nancy looked back, trying to understand her daughter’s position but never fully grasping it. She knew that Ronnie had suddenly dropped off of the face of the earth, but the only time she could ever remember someone she loved missing for more than just a few days was when her husband ran off with another woman. She knew that this was different and must have been hard on poor Barb, but she was stubborn.

 

“I know that you’re worried about your friend, Barbie-”

 

“Stop calling me that! My name isn’t Barbie, it’s Barbara and everyone calls me Barb, so can we just stick with that?” Her words struck back like a python. As Barbara hurried past her to grab her spring jacket, her mother’s mouth propped open and then closed.

 

“Enough!” Nancy snapped back. She was really starting to lose her temper now. Barbara could already hear the steam whistling out of her ears like an oncoming train. “You snuck out late the other night and didn’t come home, you didn’t answer my calls, you ignored my texts, and I had to find out through Mrs. Gardner that you were out near the river by yourself at nearly two o’clock in the morning! Do you know how worried I was? After hearing all about Jason Mandel and Polly Raynott and May-” Nancy stopped herself short. She was facing away from Barbara now, her face wrinkled with a motherly worry, but the fear that shook through her body the moment she let her words slip out was much heavier and sank into the worry like cold black molasses.

 

“What do you mean?” Barbara began to stare at her mother’s brown locks, always straighter and softer than hers. Her mother was actually quite beautiful. She shared the same light brown eyes, brown hair, and pale skin as her daughter, but she didn’t have glasses or a messy ponytail to mask the beauty. She shined like the north star yet she had always believed that the woman her husband had been pining after for the last two years was prettier and sexier. This beauty mixed with her terrified expression formed a steady flow of tears that glistened like sweat on her face.

 

Her heart sank at the realization that now was the best time to tell her daughter what she knew she was going to have to tell her eventually, but it only just happened last night. She wiped her tears and turned to her anyways, ready to tell her the horrible truth. It was like telling a little kid that Santa isn’t real, only much worse.

 

“Did something happen?” Barbara began to squeak, terribly afraid that her fears may be true.

 

“Barb...If Ronnie ever comes back, I want you to promise me that you won’t tell her what I’m about to tell you.” She placed both hands on her daughter’s shoulders and smiled a painful smile. It was the kind where the muscles around the corners of your lips would feel tight and exhausted. Barbara looked into her mother’s eyes for a moment, suddenly aware of the seriousness in her voice, and nodded. Her curls swung and bobbed around her head. She hated it when it did that.

 

Nancy took a deep breath and began to recite everything she had heard on the news slowly and softly with her hand on her daughter’s as they both sat on the couch together. Barbara listened carefully and suddenly felt the weight beginning to pile on top of her.

  
  
  
  
  


 

  
  


The floor was colder than it felt before. She had fallen asleep again and woken up an hour or two later in the same position she had passed out in. Her arm was above her head and she was reaching across the floor at seemingly nothing. Only now did she realize how incredibly ridiculous it was for there to be anything there. After all, she had been circling around this room for days and never found a single thing other than the cardboard backdrop and a curtain, but she couldn’t find the rope to pull it. It was as though it was somehow taken out while she was in there or perhaps it was never there in the first place and the curtains had simply miraculously remained open when she first walked on stage.

 

She couldn’t lift herself up even if she wanted to. Her breath was heavy in her chest and her stomach felt empty. Her mouth was almost completely dry and it was difficult for her to keep her eyes open. She was conscious, but she was exhausted. She knew that if she passed out again, she wouldn’t wake up. She was too dehydrated to live much longer. If she had any chance of finding a way out, she had missed it. She couldn’t move and though she wished as hard as she could that she could leap up and pass right through the walls and escape, she was dying. There was no doubt about that. Much like any other person, the thought that this was it, this was her death, came and went in her mind.

 

She heard a faint creak that made her dryly open one of her eyes. Though her vision was hazy, she could make out an open door with light emanating from it’s open frame. There was a figure standing there looking at her. It was tall and dark and ominous, but it was still for a moment. For just a few breaths, she thought she was starting to lose it. Not only had she hallucinated that there was a heart on the floor that she could reach out and touch, but now she was seeing a figure lurking in a doorway that couldn’t have been there.

 

The figure stepped forward and began to slowly come into focus. It was tall, that was for sure, but it didn’t look entirely human. It had strangely shaped arms and legs and hair that spiked up like licking flames. It was holding something in one of its hands. It was dripping and it was holding it by its strings. The figure came close enough to loom above her and though she had closed her eyes for a moment, the shadow passing over her eyelids suggested that it was still there. It bent down and waved the object in front of her, tickling her senses with something that smelled pleasant. It smelled like her mother’s meatloaf and though meatloaf made her violently ill, she always loved the scent. It was warm and pleasant and made her mouth water for some more, but the taste of vomit made her steer away when there was a plate of it sitting at the dining room table.

 

She remembered the time her mother brought Barbara’s family meatloaf a few months back before Jason disappeared and Matilda fell asleep in her high chair. She face planted into a plate of meatloaf and everyone laughed until they were wiping their tears with their napkins. God, she loved that smell. She didn’t care if she would get sick, she wanted her mother’s meatloaf more than anything right now. She was starving and would’ve sacrificed her left thumb for so much as a bite. She had suddenly regained her energy and sat up before grabbing the object in her hands and taking a bite right into it. She hadn’t expected the crunch and for a moment it was as though she had bitten into a raw egg, but the taste turned out juicy and pleasant, like her mother’s meatloaf.

 

She didn’t expect the hair either that got caught between her front teeth and was sewn into the flesh she had just bitten into. She immediately pulled back, revolted by what she had just done, but the taste of blood, rich in iron and somehow sweet, sat on her tongue like how lollipops leave a colorful layer of flavor on your tongue and lips. She swallowed it down, but it still remained. It was so rich that she couldn’t help but to skim her lips with her tongue, wetting them and making them feel almost healthy again, but they quickly turned dry.

 

_More._

 

There was no backing out now. The hunger was too much and now was her only chance to survive. She felt like a pile of bones, but whatever energy that was burning inside of her was still there even after the head was nothing but a pile of tangled hair on the floor. The blood around her cheeks felt sticky, but the sheet of it that covered her hands felt wonderful. She felt her stomach hanging heavily with the nutrients, satisfying her with less fatigue, but she wasn’t entirely relieved. The lights were still off and all there was was the light from the doorway that seemed unreal.

 

The figure was still there and had watched the whole course, from the first bite to the bloody hand placed on her stomach. Unlike her mother’s meatloaf, she didn’t feel sick. She had at first, but now she just felt like crying. The tears never came though and she was left to simply stare at the floor as blood marks were drawn across from pressing her hands against the cold wood. She wanted to feel pain, to feel human, but all that came was a numb satisfaction that filled her like strong liquor; strong and warm, but dizzying. She was beginning to lose her thoughts and she was sure that something in her system was messing with her, but she wasn’t sure if it was the flesh or her own submerged guilt.

 

The figure, who she was almost sure the identity of, wiped some of the blood from her face and pressed his finger to his own lips to taste it. She could almost taste it herself, bitter sweet yet rich and strong. It was the perfect mix of both; its texture smooth and wet like raspberry juice. It made her lips feel sticky, but she didn’t dare touch them or lick them again. If she did, she would lose herself again. A hand caressed her cheek, smoothing out the blood and allowing it to catch onto its glove, but it didn’t seem to mind. It felt warm, but she couldn’t give in. Its warmth was a facade that she wanted to see through, but it was oh so difficult. She hadn’t felt a touch like that since her Jane touched her cheek once when she was crying. She had just come home after Dylan had messed with her and Jane knew that something was wrong, but she never asked what. She just touched her cheek and told her not to cry before crying herself.

 

They both shared emotions like that. Every time Jane smiled, it was difficult for Ronnie to keep a straight face and whenever Ronnie came home with bruises on her body, hunched as she was trying to cover them with cream, Jane couldn’t help but to hunch her body as well. Whatever pain she was feeling, she could almost imagine Jane feeling it too. It was as though she was pulsing through her body, her spirit screaming, but she was gone all at the same time. The figure hunched so that its face was close to her own and its breath was smouldering and sticky like a burning candle, but unlike Dylan’s, it was deep as though it was coming from an empty pit.

 

She didn’t dare look in its eyes even as they glowed. She could feel her own stinging, but it wasn't from tears. It was from dehydration and forgetting to blink. She had been busily staring into the abyss that was pulling at her heart like fishing line.

 

_No. I moved past that. I passed it._

 

But there it was, mocking her. The tears finally came and one dripped from her eyelash and landed halfway down her cheek near the hand before it was wiped away. It was wiping her tears as though it didn’t want her to ruin her face or perhaps it just wanted a taste of her tears too. It hand only moved to wipe the tears. She didn’t sob or break down into wails. She just sat with her face as straight as it had ever been and her eyes burning.

 

_This is it. I’m not Ronnie anymore. I’m not human. I’ve never been innocent, but I sure as hell am not now. I’m something else now. I’m not sure what, but it’s certainly something._

 

A tear managed to escape the soft touch of the fabric and crawled down her neck. It tickled as it escaped the underside of her chin, but it felt cool against her skin like a cold hand brushing down her throat. She sniffled once and took a breath. For the first time since their first confrontation, she looked into its eyes and saw the golden circles that gazed into her. They were better than looking into the abyss. The voice inside of her that was telling her to be deceived by those eyes was much less threatening than the voice of the Turtle. It was a whisper that hushed her the way her mother would hush her as a baby. It made the tears suddenly feel warm, and though her eyes still stung, it wasn’t just from the tears and dehydration, but from the lights that bore into her core.

 

They circled and pulsed in her skull, but it was a gentle tingle of sensation that dried her tears and silenced the voice in her head that was telling her to make way for the shadows.

 

_You’ve been in here, in the dark, for too long. Bring in the light._

 

Her body grew heavier with every breath and she began to feel as though she was suffocating.

 

 _I’m not getting enough air,_ she thought. _I’ve been in here for too long. I need air. Now._

 

 _Don’t pass out!_ Barbara’s voice screamed in her mind as though it were screaming in an opera house. _If you pass out, you’ll be vulnerable. This might be part of It’s plan; feed you and then wait until you fall asleep and starve you again or worse. Don’t give It what It wants. You are running out of time!_

 

_The door._

 

_You would have to get past It and there’s not much of a chance that it would work. It’s stronger (stronger), faster (faster), and It has the advantage. It can use Its deadlights (dead). You heard the turtle, he made you the same way that he made It, therefore you have them too (I have them too). You just need to figure out how to use them._

 

_If I can use the deadlights, then I can kill him._

 

_Exactly._

 

She could see Barbara’s silhouette beside her, her face leaned towards her into a whisper. It was blurry and unfocused, but it seemed too real.

 

_What if…_

 

_What? You can’t just keep living in a world of What Ifs. You have to start thinking about reality, Ronnie._

 

_What if I don’t want to kill It._

 

_Are you stupid? If you don’t kill It, then It will kill you!_

 

_It’s not It’s fault that we’re hungry._

 

_What are you even talking about, Ronnie? It tried to kill you. Don’t be stupid. It couldn’t give two shits about you. It can’t feel the emotions that we feel. It’s not even human, so whatever you’re thinking right now, it’s not true. That thing is going to kill you!_

 

_That thing is just like me._

 

_You know that that’s not true. You have the advantage._

 

_Just a moment ago, you said that because It can use Its deadlights that It has the advantage._

 

_That’s only true when it comes down to tactics, but in this sense, you’re the human here, Ronnie. Not them._

 

_But I’m not. Neither of us are. We’re both in this boat now and I don’t care where we’re going anymore. Anywhere is better than here. If I want to see Haley and mom again, I’m gonna have to live like this, Barb._

 

_But you can’t Ronnie! And you shouldn’t! It’s just not right!_

 

 _None of this was right from the start and it’s not about to get any righter. I’ve made up my mind._ She began to feel hot and dizzy. _I’m gonna do whatever I have to do. I drank the blood. It’s too late now. I fed. Now I have to know what’s behind the curtain._

 

 _You’re right._ Her voice changed into that of a deep and powerful phantom.

 

_The Turtle._

 

_It’s too late now. I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have made you. Either of you. And now you’re both going to starve. I’ve shown my mercy but I will show no more. If you won’t kill It yourself, then I’ll have to make you. If not, then I’ll send them back so you will retreat into that filthy well and rot down there until you awaken again, starving, and then I’ll keep them coming. The hunger will be worse than any hell you could ever imagine. You have a choice, Ronnie. Which will it be?_

 

The clown had its hand wrapped around her chin so it pressed into her jaw and kept her looking up. There was no escaping the yellow circles now and they were bleeding into her own. Every blink sent a shiver of energy through her body like sparks flying from wires beneath her skin. It felt amazing; warm and beautiful, like a mixture of sugar and wine that was trying to break down in her stomach. She tasted it on her lips and it tasted better than revenge. It tasted new and exciting and she wanted it. She _needed_ it.

 

_If I starve down here, then you’re the killer, not me. Death can wait for the both of us, no matter how much we deserve it._

 

The voice was silent. It was as though a seal was broken and it had simply vanished; as though she had blown the dust off of an old book and it went away and settled elsewhere. Just when the voice left, her vision went out and she felt herself faint. It was 4:40 AM. May died four hours earlier in her bedroom and was found that same morning mutilated. She was missing her head and the police were scrounging for it. They knocked on Mr. and Mrs. Boslan’s door and neither of them could give them any information.

 

Ronnie slept and the clown could do nothing but wonder what she and the Turtle were discussing in that moment when he stared into her yellow irises.

  
  
  
  
  


His spit didn’t go the furthest. Shit. The quarry was deep enough to jump in from the hooked cliff that overlooked it. The air was warmer than usual and the sun was out. The day felt nice, peaceful, and Dylan was out to change that. James and Hunter stood on either side of them looking into the water. Hunter won the spitting contest and made a triumphant woot before looking at Dylan who was about ready to push him into the water.

 

“You guys wanna go in or are we just gonna stand here like pussies?”

 

James looked at Hunter who glanced back before looking back at Dylan. Both confirmed that he was completely serious. Hunter shrugged and took off his shirt to show off his belly. He was in his jeans but he didn’t want to strip down to his underwear, so he kicked off his shoes and made a leap for it. James watched in awe and smiled when he hit the water.

 

 _Musta hurt,_ Dylan thought. The thought left a smile on his face. After the large splash of water died, Hunter came up with his short dark hair in his eyes and had to push it back before blowing the water out of his nose. He turned around to look at Dylan who gave him a smile of approval. It was the first time since their last talk with Ronnie that he had seen him smile. It felt better than seeing him with a frown.

 

“You’re next, wuss” Dylan mocked. James gulped down a mouthful of saliva that he had forgotten to swallow and looked down at the water. It wasn’t too high up but the drop didn’t look too kind either. It was just enough to make his heart leap into his throat a little every time he looked at it.

 

“You scared or what? Jump!” Dylan impatiently insisted. James took the decision to close his eyes to help calm himself. It was just a little drop and if Hunter could do it, then so could he. He jumped after a moment to breathe and opened his eyes the moment he felt the wind on his face. The quarry was quite beautiful from his standpoint, or rather, _fall_ point, but the water came crashing into him before he could get a good look at it. It was cold and it surprised him when it touched his skin and swallowed him. He remained underwater for a moment and enjoyed the feeling of just floating while surrounded by the muffled sound of moving water.

 

There was a strange stillness besides the thin stream of bubbles rising from his nose. For the second time since he jumped, he opened his eyes to see what the water looked like from beneath. It stung and everything seemed too blurry at first to distinguish, but the world soon came into focus and he could see the misty water. It probably wasn’t good for him to have his eyes open in such dirty water, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to know what it looked like. He broke through the surface and gasped for air. The air felt warmer against his skin than he thought it would, but the water felt nice. He pushed his hair out of his face and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Though his eyes itched, he looked up as Dylan made a cannonball into the water and left a gigantic splash that rained on top of the both of them, leaving them to clap when Dylan emerged from the ripples.

 

They swam for a little while in the sunlight, taking in the refreshing touch of the water, before climbing out in their soaked clothes that stuck to them like paper mache. Dylan and James removed their shirts and made their way back up towards the high rock to retrieve their shoes. James would get Hunter’s clothes for him while he threw rocks in the water. He liked the way they splashed and plunked when they broke through the water’s surface. It was a satisfying sound that he wanted to hear before they left for Dylan’s house so they could steal some of his dad’s beer and smash some empty bottles with their wooden baseball bats.

 

As he was throwing the rocks in and watching one skip, he noticed a ripple that hadn’t been there before that definitely wasn’t caused by the skipping rock. It was farther off to the right and out quite a bit. It looked like something had just moved.

 

_Probably a frog or something._

 

He threw another rock and watched it plunk into the water. The ripple was the best part. Watching water fold over itself was somehow satisfying to watch, so he picked up another rock. There was a splash somewhere on his right. Startled, he dropped his arm and snapped his head towards it, waiting to see Dylan or James standing with rocks in their hands or with water up to their waists, but he was alone at the waterbank. He watched as a ripple seemed to crawl outward from a fixed point in the water, calling for his attention. He cautiously walked towards it, curious to see what it was that caused the disturbance, but the closer he was to the water, the more uneasy he felt. Something didn’t feel right.

 

He looked down into the water and saw something moving towards him. It was black and grimey and it moved at the pace of a tortoise. It seemed to be reaching out at him, grasping for him with its long and boney fingers, but he stepped back before it could touch him. He yelped and felt his heart thrust into his throat.

 

_This can’t be happening!_

 

But it was. Something was reaching for him from the water. From the water, a black and hairless skull emerged with a slack jaw and weeds ducking in and out of its empty eye sockets while wrapped around its head, or rather, what was left of it. It began to crawl like a spider towards him and attempted at grabbing his leg once more, but he kicked his leg away and fell on his ass before scrambling away just in time to escape its path. He ran into the woods rather than along the water out of fear that there may be more of them and despite tripping twice on roots, he pushed his way through the trees and into shadow of the woods.

 

Dylan and James came back with their clothes and James had Hunter’s shirt and shoes tuck beneath his arm, but Hunter was nowhere to be found. In fact, despite their efforts at searching for him, he didn’t show up until three hours later when he was found walking along the road, scraped and shaking. After a long list of questions and a lecture from his father, he changed out of his dirty jeans and into a new pair of underwear before slipping beneath his covers. He didn’t sleep that night or any night after that. He didn’t speak to anyone about what he saw and he certainly didn’t speak to his dad out of fear that he might beat him for acting like a maniac.

 

It wasn’t just the strange creature in the water that was terrifying him, but the image of his friends’ mutilated bodies which gnawed at his mind in the late hours of the night.


	12. Worst Fears Come True

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunter speaks with a detective and psychiatrist about his experiences after the murders and Barbara, still searching for her lost friend and fueled by the newly learned information, pays a visit to the Boslans' house.

He slouched in his seat underneath the painfully low ceiling light. Its circular shape made it harder for the light to escape, so it cascaded like laser rays on his face and sharpened his soft features. He was nervous and terrified. He always thought that he was tough like Dylan, but Dylan wasn’t there anymore. He had no one to impress, so he thought, ‘Who am I kidding?’ And there really was no answer other than himself. For the first time since he met Dylan and James, he looked down at his hands and felt his heart quake. There was an eerie pause for thought after the detective sat down that made his body feel as though it was submerged in freezing water.

 

He was still and had forgotten how to breathe.

 

_What were you doing on the side of the road the other night, Hunter?_

 

He reminded himself to breathe again. He didn’t want to remember anything. It was like finally getting an exam over with and then having to remember the answer to every single question that was on it. It was hard to remember everything to the last detail because it had all already happened.

 

_I was heading home._

 

_Even though you live in the South side of town?_

 

_My dad lives near Harris Avenue._

 

_But you’re not legally allowed to see him, right? Ever since your parents divorced and your father was accused of abuse?_

 

_Yeah._

 

The detective shifted in his seat and gave him a conspiring glare.

 

_Why were you headed to your dad’s house?_

 

No reply.

 

_Did you know that it was past curfew? If the officer hadn’t noticed your injuries, you would have been prosecuted._

 

_I did, but I couldn’t find a ride home, so I walked._

 

_Where were you coming from?_

 

_The woods behind the quarry._

 

_What was a young man like you doing there by yourself?_

 

_I was running._

 

The mood suddenly changed like when spooky campfire tales start out ordinary and then begin to plunge into a dark descent.

 

_From what?_

 

No reply.

 

_Did you see what happened to Dylan Purcell and James Stowe?_

 

_They were my friends. We were just having fun and swimming around. It’s the start of summer and every summer we go down to the quarry to just mess around. That’s what we always do, but then everything became fucked._

 

The detective leaned over the table and looked him directly in the eye with a shadow of sincerity in his eyes. His lips moved, but it was as though the sound coming out was delayed and it took a moment for Hunter to grasp what he had said.

 

_What did you see, Hunter?_

 

Oh, the fleshy horror; the raw tenderness of fear. There was no telling how much time had passed since he last saw it. What was it? The fifth grade maybe. He couldn’t recall, but he had never felt so worn down and naked. He was fully dressed in his jeans and grey shirt and cap, but he felt bare. He walked along the side of the road mindlessly the night it happened and truth be told, he wasn’t thinking of home at all. He hated his dad with every limb on his body. He would have driven him out of his and his mother’s lives sooner if he wasn’t so vulnerable as a child. He just wasn’t sure where to go, so he started walking and didn’t stop until the officer called out to him and flashed his light on him to get a better look.

 

The branches cut up his face and stomach. His knees were bruised and dirty with grass stains and his jeans were tattered with rips and dirt. His belly which hung over the waistline of his jeans was bleeding and smeared with bark from scraping against a few trees. There was no telling how many scrapes and bruises he had. He didn’t really notice them until he was examined.

 

“He looked like he had just come crawling out of hell,” officer Miles began, “I didn’t care whether or not he was walking out past curfew. I just wanted to get him help and find out what happened. It’s not just my job, you know? I have a kid too and after all the stuff that happened between him and his dad, I just wanted to make sure he was alright.”

 

_Hunter?_

 

He didn’t lift his eyes. He just sank further in his seat as the images came and went. It was difficult to piece together. It was like trying to reassemble a page that’s been torn into small pieces. He kept trying to fetch those pieces, but every time he tried to focus, it was as though they were an old used tape that gets caught in the projector. They would kind of burn out, but there would still be remnants, pieces of a memory that is on the brink of being forgotten. And he kept switching between photographs in his mind, trying to hold on to all that he could.

 

_I didn’t kill them, if that’s what you’re looking for, detective._

 

_Then who did?_

 

Pause.

 

_The clown._

 

A keychain heavy with curious keys ready to unlock any door clinked in the detective’s mind and rang.

 

_What clown, Hunter?_

 

_I’m telling you, it was the clown! That DAMN clown! I swear to God, it’s EVIL!_

 

_Let’s not raise our voices. What are you talking about?_

 

_For God’s sake, I thought it was just a nightmare, but it was real. The clown is real…_

 

He began to shake violently and his eyes were filled with fire and fear.

 

_...and it’s coming for us all. Those stupid balloons. That twisted FUCKING smile! It’s no wonder none of you have ever heard of it! It’s got its hands on you._

 

The series of hysterical laughter that followed was associated with temporary insanity and PTSD. Hunter’s sleeping habits were later documented and it was discovered that he was also an insomniac. He began to experience violent outbursts and sudden panic attacks and was admitted to the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center where he remained for some time.

 

_Can you describe the clown for me?_

 

The psychiatrist asked with a pen in her hand. She looked quite pretty. Hunter really liked her, but he wasn’t into older women. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun and her shirt was a little too short, but she wore black tights and a suit jacket. She looked like your typical psychiatrist, only much more appealing to the eyes. She wore mascara, but otherwise her face was bare. He liked it better that way anyways. Dylan always looked at girls who wore cakey makeup and called them sluts. They liked to mess around with Ronnie, Dylan for the most part, but Hunter never thought it would go that far. He looked at that psychiatrist and he saw someone that Dylan would sexualize the way he always did.

 

For a moment, he started to hate Dylan. It’s true that sometimes you don’t realize the things you truly like about someone until they’re dead, but in this case Hunter found the things that he really disliked about Dylan. He hated the way he would push him and James around and he hated how he got angry so easily. He hated how he was always better and stronger than the both of them and how he would always make fun of James for driving around in his dad’s shitty old car. He hated the way he talked sometimes and the way he always stole food from them. He hated his selfishness and how he always acted tough in front of everyone, but the moment his dad says something a little bit raw, he would shake like a baby.

 

_He had a silver suit and red hair. There were orange pom poms going down the front of his suit that were a little crooked. He had two front teeth that stuck out against his bottom lip like rabbit teeth and he looked really ancient. Like something out of the 1800s. His eyes were evil. They looked yellow. How can someone’s eyes be yellow like that? And the way he talks too. It’s like a real clown, but he doesn’t sound at all friendly. It just felt like something straight out of a nightmare._

 

Her pen scratched against the paper.

 

_Do you still see the clown?_

 

_Yes._

 

There was a tremor in his voice; a light trill that tickled his throat and made him forget to breathe again. His shoulders tensed and he readjusted his posture.

 

_When do you see him?_

 

_It used to just be in my dreams, but now it’s everywhere. I can’t look down the hallway without seeing him there at the very end. He’s so…_

 

Breathe.

 

_...tall. He fills up the hallway like he’s standing in a closet._

 

That’s it. Easy.

 

_I can always see his eyes just glowing through the darkness whenever I’m in my room trying to sleep. He’s always watching me. Oh God, I think he’s coming for me next._

 

_Does anyone else see him?_

 

_No. He only shows himself to those that he wants to or those who know about him. If you believe me, you’ll be able to see him too, but if you don’t, then that’s fine too. He knows about what I saw and he’ll use it against me. He’ll use it to kill me and..._

 

His calm words evolved into choppy phrases squeezed between sobs.

 

 _Who wouldn’t be afraid of that? Who would blame me for being scared to sleep? That thing is in my room every night and there’s nothing I can do to stop it! It has a hold on all of you, so I’m hopeless! And I’m so_ fucking _scared._

 

_Nothing is going to hurt you, Hunter. We’re all here to help you._

 

He screamed.

 

_No one can help me. Not unless they know how to kill that thing and when someone like that comes along, I’ll be waiting for them right here and you bring them to me and we’ll figure things out. The rest of you are just talk._

 

_What makes you say that?_

 

 _Because that’s the_ only _way to help me and there aren’t very many people that know what’s wrong with this town and that’s just IT! IT doesn’t want you people to know! It wants you to turn your cheeks, look the other way, walk a few steps West or go fucking shopping on the weekends while your kid is being murdered!_

 

He had really lost it now. Tears were descending his face. The world was falling down on him and his friends were dead. The murderer was still out there, prowling and feeding off of him like a leech. It was still out there plotting how it was going to prepare its food before heading out and killing it.

 

_What do you think its motive is, if what you claim to have happened is true._

 

He smiled a lifeless smile that made the light seem just a little less dim against his face.

 

_They were messing with Ronnie Boslan right before they died. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt it if she saw everything. She may be missing, but she’s still alive, Detective, and I saw her. She was there and I could bet you a million bucks that she finally snapped and slaughtered them in cold blood or even better yet, the clown did it for her. There has to be a reason why this is happening, Dr. Hayes. It didn’t seem random like all of the other kids. If I hadn’t run away so fast and gotten myself out of there, I would’ve ended up joining their little pile of bodies._

 

_What actions do you suggest would have to be carried out if what you are saying is true?_

 

Pause.

 

_Kill that fucking slut._

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


If she had said that she wasn’t afraid when she heard the news about May Reeler, Barbara would be lying. If that were true, she wouldn’t have left that house. Aftering hearing from her mother, she headed out into the summer air and took her bike down to Mister and Misses Boslan’s house. There was a heavy weight in her heart that she was trying to bear. It sank further down at every click of her bike.

 

_I’m gonna have to see if I can fix it again._

 

The wind breathed against her pink cheeks and tasseled with her hair. The evening was drawing to an end and the sun was low in the sky. The street lights were going to have to come on soon, but never the third one past Derry High School. It had been broken since yesterday and hadn’t been fixed yet. Her mother offered her a ride but she insisted on going alone. Of course, Mrs. Caulin wasn’t very fond of the idea, but the look in her daughter’s eyes terrified her. It was a look she had never seen before and for a moment, it was as though her daughter had completely changed. She wasn’t as light hearted as she used to be and there were dark circles behind her specs.

 

There was no doubt that she was more than serious towards finding Ronnie. She was willing to risk everything, so she watched as her daughter closed the front door behind her with a flashlight in hand. Going by how far of a bike ride the Boslans’ house was, it was probably going to be dark by the time she arrived. Scratch that. It was _definitely_ going to be dark. The sun stooped just above the horizon and the clouds weren’t very good at hiding it. It was beginning to feel a little cool like the way a splash of water feels after a long day of hard labor. It felt like her bike was gliding down the pavement and she watched as trees and poles and people whizzed by. The telephone lines looked like thick black snakes weaving through branches and slithering around poles against the dim sky. People were huddling together in groups out of fear that one may be left behind and never retrieved.

 

They tried to hide their anxiety, but it shimmered across their eyes. They all began to walk faster and faster and some of them ducked into their houses while others tried taking their time. The ones that walked alone looked around them nervously, cocking their head to the side whenever they heard the last cheep of a bird or the subtle rustle of leaves. It was like The Town That Dreaded Sundown. No one wanted to be the next victim caught on a quiet night. Not after May Reeler. While Polly, Jane, Ronnie, and Jason all went missing in broad daylight, May, Mitchel, and Lucas all went missing after sundown. After May’s death, police officers really took to the streets and if you tried walking around late at night, you’d get caught before you could even say, “Jeepers!”

 

She pedalled down Center Street and towards Canal Street where she passed the Paul Bunyan statue, still somehow untouched by the flood. She didn’t stop to look at it, but it was almost as if she saw it for the first time. It was shining under the evening light and though it was smiling, it somehow gave her chills. Though she hadn’t really thought about it before, that statue was creepy as hell. Its eyes were dark and she could swear that one of them was slightly lopsided, and it wouldn’t stop smiling.

 

_The clown._

 

Her bike squealed as it came to a sudden halt just a few yards down. She and Ronnie had known about the clown for only a month, so naturally she still tried to pass off the possibility that It could be the reason for Ronnie’s disappearance. There was no denying it now. It took her sister and now it was just finishing the job, but that wasn’t what worried her the most. What worried her was that Ronnie was probably already dead and it may have just been her fault. As for Jane, she had been missing for what felt like years, but was no longer than a month and a half. Ronnie had tried to look for Jane after her disappearance. After her encounter with the clown in the storm drain, the both of them put their heads together and agreed that this had to be what killed George Denbrough back in ‘57.

 

Jason, Mitchel, Lucas, and Jane just added fuel to the fire. George died on Jackson Street near a storm drain with his arm torn off. It was during the flood too. It couldn’t have been coincidence that he had died there -that was for sure, and whether or not Jane had met the same fate was still uncertain.

 

_She’s somewhere. I know it. She wouldn’t go after It unless she knows what she’s doing. She’s smart. She wouldn’t go by herself. She would’ve told me. She would’ve never let me handle this by myself. She would’ve dialed. She would’ve knocked. She would’ve tapped my shoulder and said, “I’m gonna find Jane and I want you to come with me. Whatta ya say?” and I would’ve said she’s crazy, but I would’ve gone with her no matter how scared I was. Yeah, she’s got a plan. She’s out there._

 

She crossed Mile Hill and pushed onto Witcham Street. The sun was barely visible now and the clouds had sunken into a deep blue that seemed darker than an ocean bed. The wind was picking up just a little and it roughed up her hair. Beads of sweat began trickling down the sides of her face. She pedalled faster and harder than she had ever done so in her life. If it was just a normal night, she would’ve gone a little slower and saved her breath for another time, but that night was far from normal. This wasn’t Polly Raynott or Jason Mandell or Lucas Lesley or Mitchel Hucker. This wasn’t George Denbrough or Betty Ripsom or Patrick Hocksetter.

 

This was Ronnie Boslan, the only friend who had ever stayed by her side since she was a baby. This was Jane Boslan, the little sister she never had. This was May Reeler, the girl who was her best friend in middle school before her family left town. All three of them would flip pennies into the storm drains and make wishes as though they were throwing pennies into wishing wells. She was always slightly afraid of what might be lurking beyond the drain, snatching all of their pennies, but she always felt safe around them. Now May was gone and Ronnie and Jane were missing. She crossed Jackson Street just as she was thinking of this and turned her head to look down the pavement.

 

_A kid died here. A little kid like Jane. Polly was pretty young too. Jason too. And Lucas. Mitchel was a little older, but he still hadn’t hit puberty yet. They were all too young._

 

And as she sped closer towards the turn onto West Broadway, she thought of Matilda back at Mrs. Ramingway’s house. She thought of what would happen if she too went missing while she was out looking for Ronnie and Jane. Fueled by the knowledge that May had been brutally murdered a few days after Ronnie went missing, she pedalled with all of her remaining strength and found herself barely making the turn without tipping over her bike. It’s old wheels clicked towards Mr. and Mrs. Boslan’s house and she leaned her bike against the chipped painted fence. It was dark out now and the sky gave way to a void that seemed to swallow the entire town.

 

There was a light on in the living room. She glanced through the curtains and saw Mr. Boslan sitting in front of the television with a glum expression on his face. His hair was a nest of spikes jutting out at awkward angles and grey streaks that shined like silver in the lamp light. His eyes were unmoving and he looked as if he had been sitting there for hours mindlessly staring at the screen. There was no telling what he was thinking, but he seemed terribly sad. It made her wish she could make all of the worries in the world disappear into thin air, but as long as Ronnie and Jane were missing, there was no end to their worries. It was like a snowball rolling down a hill; it would keep rolling and getting bigger until something got in its way and it suddenly burst and flew everywhere. Even when it’s destroyed, it leaves a trail behind.

 

She rang the doorbell once before she was greeted by a friendly face. It was Mrs. Boslan, all ready for bed. She was dressed in her nightgown and she had pink curlers in her hair. With a head like Barbara’s, she wondered what it was like to want curly hair. She had her slippers on and seemed surprised to see Barbara standing there this late. It was just past seven and the streets were dark and quiet. Not a single living thing could be seen.

 

“Barb? What are you doing here so late? It’s past curfew!” Her face looked tired. There were wrinkles under her eyes accompanied by blue and grey circles. For her, it was another night of pretending like everything was okay even though she was bound to spend hours tossing and turning and never getting a wink of shut-eye.

 

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Boslan. May I come in?” She held her hands together as though she was nervous, but she was terrified. She wanted to seem collected, but she was about to lose her mind. She had to get help from people who would believe her, but she wasn’t sure if they really would. Mrs. Boslan nodded and stepped aside. She held the door open as Barbara stepped inside and immediately remembered what their house smelled like. It always smelled like baked pie around this time of night, but tonight it smelled like paint and cigarettes. She remembered Ronnie talking about how her parents wanted to repaint their bedroom. She guessed that they had decided to do it after all.

 

She looked over into the living room and saw Mr. Boslan again. He didn’t look up to greet her. He was too engaged in one of those old black and white detective movies. She and her dad used to watch those when she was a kid on the living room rug in front of the sofa. The Boslans used to have a rug but it had so many stains and so much dirt gathering underneath it that they decided to throw it out. Now they have a shiny new wooden floor. Haley wanted to get another one, but her mother refused. She stopped watching her cartoons on the floor and started sitting on the couch, but now her dad was taking up most of it.

 

Mrs. Boslan led her into the dining room to have a seat. Haley must’ve been upstairs in her bedroom. She rarely came down to play the piano anymore. She peered into their small piano lounge and saw that the lid was closed. Haley usually kept it open on the weekends so that she didn’t have to lift it every time she sat down to practice. It was heavy for someone as scrawny as her, so seeing it closed made her wonder when it was last put to use.

 

“Would you like some water? You look thirsty.” Her throat was parched and she was tempted to lick her lips. The thought of water made her suddenly feel as though she was about to die of dehydration.

 

“Yes, please.”

 

Mrs. Boslan poured her a glass of water and handed it to her as she sat down beside her. Barbara gulped it down in less than a heartbeat and nearly choked from drinking too fast. It felt cool as it went down though and she could feel herself waking up a little after a long day.

 

“Slow down! You’ll wound up coughing it back up!” Mrs. Boslan remarked, but she sounded more exhausted than worried. Barbara set down the glass as it still had a clear shot at the bottom. She suddenly felt confident and sure enough to speak.

 

“Have you had any luck at finding Ronnie?” She had to ask. Mrs. Boslan sighed deeply and she could swear that the bags under her eyes got puffier.

 

“None. It’s funny. I remember when she was a little girl, she used to hate holding my hand. She said it made her feel like she was a dog on a leash, but I didn’t wanna let her go, so I’d grab her by the back of the collar and tell her to stay by mommy wherever we went. It made me worry a lot ‘cause there are all kinds of people out there that wanna snatch kids up and I just didn’t want anyone to take my little Ronnie, you know? And now this. It’s like my worst fear coming true, only I don’t know what really happened. Anyways, that mustn’t be all you’re here about.”

 

_I’m afraid it has come true, Mrs. Boz. Ronnie really did get snatched up, I just don’t know what to do. I’m scared of going there alone. I wish you could come with me, but I think I just need to muster up the courage. I promise, I’m going to get her back. I’m gonna find her and then I’m gonna get her back. You just wait for me._

 

“I think I know what you mean. I wanted to tell you something that I think I should’ve told you before since now it might be too late.”

 

“Does it have to do with Ronnie?” She could see Mrs. Boslan’s eyes flutter as her heart skipped a beat.

 

_This is your only chance to tell her everything you can._

 

She nodded. Mrs. Boslan leaned closer and folded her hands over the table with ears perked.

 

“Tell me.”

 

Barbara glanced down the hallway towards the living room where she was sure Mr. Boslan probably couldn’t hear. They were speaking in hush voices, so there was no doubt that the television was all that could reach his ears, but she still felt nervous. It was probably best that he didn’t hear. When she saw the light from the television flashing against the wall and heard the far-off sound of one of those Pepsi commercials with The Jackson 5 and a bunch of kids dressed like them dancing, she took a deep breath. The moment it came on, Mr. Boslan finally spoke and said, “They’ve had the same damn commercial for the last what? Year? Jeezus.” She heard the lyrics faintly call from down the hall, “You’re a whole new generation!”

 

_Indeed, we really are. A whole new generation of dead kids and monsters living in sewers. Let’s not forget the scary movie marathons on TV that give us a whole new genre of nightmares for clowns with a hunger for human flesh to use against us. What a time to be alive! Pop open a Pepsi! Hand one down! I’m sure we’ll all need it._

 

“Ronnie and I were looking for Jane on our own after she disappeared. We knew that it was the police’s business, but we just couldn’t help ourselves, you know? So we started searching and we went around Kansas Street trying to figure out where she might’ve gone. The police think it was a case of child abduction and we think they’re right. She couldn’t have gotten lost since she knew the way home by heart and they found blood near the scene that belonged to her. They’re not sure what kind of wound it was, but they said it wasn’t enough to kill her. Ronnie and I went down to the barrens and… we saw something.”

 

Mrs. Boslan leaned even closer. “What did you see?” There was a pause and then another deep breath from Barbara.

 

“We saw one of the dead kids, Polly Raynott, waving at us. At first, we didn’t believe it ourselves, but we couldn’t have both been going crazy at the same time. We started researching about some of Derry’s history and we found that stuff like this happens once every twenty seven years. I’m talking about some really bad stuff like the Easter Egg Explosion and the Black Spot. And it’s not just that.” She pulled out a folded up piece of paper. It had been sitting on her desk for a few days and was shoved in her pocket just before she left. It was an article from an old newspaper that was dated back to October, 1957. It showed a picture of George Denbrough’s school picture that was taken not too long before he died. “Kids die or go missing during these time frames. Some of them have been missing since 1930, some as early as 1902.”

 

Mrs. Boslan examined the article closely while she listened. She had never looked so scared yet focused.

 

“So what you’re telling me is that you think this is some sort of phenomenon? Is that it?” She looked up.

 

“I know it. A coincidence like this doesn’t exist. It always happens every twenty seven years except for one case with this kid named Adrian Mellon.” She pulled out another newspaper article and flattened it against the table. “The phenomenon started early when he was thrown off of a bridge by three homophobic teenagers and died at the bottom near the water. He was missing a part of his armpit and his ribs were cracked, yet no one knew why. The teenagers that killed him didn’t mention anything involving such wounds. Then kids started dying or going missing. Georgie Denbrough, Betty Ripsom, Patrick Hocksetter, and get this. Reginald Belch Huggins and Victor Criss were both murdered by Henry Bowers during his rampage alongside his father and he was accused of killing all of the kids that died that summer.”

 

Mrs. Boslan rubbed her forehead above her brow and rested her elbows against the table. “Jesus. I know that a lot of people get killed in this town, but Lord, this town must be cursed! So what do you think is making all these kids disappear?” She looked at Barbara with so much sadness and fear and concern in her eyes that it made her turn back the dial and begin to wonder if she could really do this. She bit the inside of her lip and replied weakly.

 

“ _What_ is a good start. It’s not a person that’s behind all of this, it’s one big thing that’s been around ever since the very beginning.” She pulled out one last set of documents, all folded up and creased, but still legible. The first one showed a drawing that was dated back to the early 1800s. With this, she began to explain in vivid detail the history of Derry according to what she dug up at the library and while she spoke. Mrs. Boslan’s eyes wandered from the document’s to Barbara’s face and she kept her lips pressed and silent. She seemed to be taking every word as gospel and whether or not she truly wanted to believe that it was a creature behind this phenomenon was up to her.

 

Whatever the case was, from this moment forward, the Caulins were the targets of many unfortunate events including the deaths of everyone involved in the search for Ronnie Boslan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last sentence may have thrown a lot of people off-guard, but that's what a lot of this story is being built out of so expect a lot of good or bad twists (: Like the story so far? I post the story first to Quotev (my username is FlowerCraft) and then after revision through there, I post it here! So if you ever feel too impatient to wait very long for the next chapter, feel free to check it out! I update as often as I can and would love some feedback. Thank you to all of the readers so far! I try my best to deliver a well told and well thought out story to readers, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to comment or message me. Much love!


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